Erik Sand, Director of Strategic Relationships and
Dr. Thomas Carbone, Technical Director | both at UCF’s Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) and
Mike Eakins, Creative Lead | Mixed Emerging Technology Integration Lab (METIL) at UCF Institute for Simulation & Training

Finding Partners in Applied Research – A Case Study on Industry/Academic Collaboration

Sometimes financial, physical and content constraints on graduate programs force university researchers to be creative. This presentation talks about how FIEA faculty designed a class called GameLab to help expose students to Serious Games while simultaneously fostering lasting research and development partners outside traditional entertainment industry partners.

We will talk about how the development life cycle of a simple handheld game that teaches cleaning protocols for hospital janitors in the VA hospital network helped develop a template for how FIEA now finds and interacts with industry partners. It is a case study to show how a project can move from relationship to MVP to full-on build and deployment of a robust application in the context FIEA’s student centric curriculum. UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training then finished the final product for delivery to the VA.