Development of a Serious Game for Practicing Pronouns

Abstract

One primary aspect of civic education is to build inclusive societies where everyone can feel valued, respected and
celebrated for their individual diverse attributes. While a civilised society exercises tolerance, empathy, compassion and
forgiveness, in the daily walks of life there are no second chances to make the correct first impression. Many individuals are
exceptionally apprehensive when having to interact with minorities through fear of causing unintentional offence or
emotional damage in first encounter situations. Serious games can offer an immersive and educational training experience
where mistakes can be made with far fewer ramifications than in real life making them significantly more risk free. This paper
explores the development of Pronouns in Practice, a serious game designed specifically to address inclusive communication,
with a focus on pronoun use. This paper will review the literature on the use of serious games in Equality, Diversity and
Inclusion (EDI) related areas particularly looking at pronoun related training in the Educational Sector. The prototype will be
constructed using subject experts in conjunction with user and design requirements identified in the literature review and a
design framework that is outlined. The paper will present a preliminary design framework for development and evaluation
of serious games in EDI related subjects and will particularly look at the use of simulations in initial human interaction with
the use of pronouns. The paper intends to produce a prototype to address alleviating concerns with general interaction
associated with using pronouns.