Teaching group decision making skills to emergency managers via digital games

This chapter discusses how a focus on establishing the appropriate learning outcomes of an educational programme, and creatively incorporating these learning outcomes within the design of a game, can lead to the development of a useful educational game. Specifically, it demonstrates the process involved in generating game design criteria from a multi-disciplinary literature review. The design of a game that has been developed as part of a project to train emergency managers in group decision making and communications skills is presented, along with some initial evaluations of that game design. It appears that the game presented can function as a valid practical element of a programme for the training of group decision making and communication skills with emergency management personnel.