DATE: 5-7 p.m., Nov. 19, 2009.

EVENT: Serious Games Expo, a showcase of simulation and game-type activities being used for teaching and skill mastery in education, medicine, business and industry. A flight simulator is one example of a serious game, a type of activity designed to foster deep, multidisciplinary, sensory learning.

Thought leaders from the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor community will display their serious game products such as prediction market software Crowd Clarity, Facebook marketplace Bodega Shop, and educational games Bibliobouts and Place Out of Time. Crowd Clarity uses the wisdom of crowds to help companies decide when to launch a new product. Bodega Shop allows Facebook users to shop for and trade gifts. Bibliobouts supports literacy for incoming college students. Place Out of Time assigns participants a historical figure to play as they argue in a trial related to a contemporary issue. These are just a few of the products that will be on display.

“You can do complex, multidisciplinary, multifaceted things in a game environment,” said Ken Ludwig, expo organizer and a lecturer in the U-M Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering. “Underlying serious games is how people actually learn. They learn through all their senses and nonlinearly. When you learn stuff this way, you learn it totally.”

PLACE: Room 265 Chrysler Center, 2121 Bonisteel Blvd., on U-M’s North Campus.

Related Links:

• Map
• Medical Innovation Center
• School of Information
• Computer + Video Game Archive
• Center for Entrepreneurship