GERONTECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

    The game design was created by students for students and seniors with experts in curriculum and game development and modeling technology. Students applied their research and field work to create game goals to design a habitat for deep space, a   multi-purpose  transport vehicle, and physical diagnostic and monitoring technology, e.g. nanotechnology to monitor body functions and self-replicating assistive technology.  Tri-C students and the high school students were eligible to receive academic credit for their work.

    The Tri-c students worked with each of the Ohio groups to develop the intergenerational  game board and instructions that required players to identify resources and parts needed to  build a Habitat, Transportation Vehicle, and Monitoring and Diagnostic Device for injuries and illness to be used on Mars surface, all while working together to avoid a climate disaster. 

    The players advance around the board by answering trivia questions derived from responses gathered from the focus groups. For example, to identify parts for the  Monitoring and Diagnostic Device, players had to answer trivia questions about measuring blood pressure and visual acuity,  causes of falls and/or treatment for sprains and loss of balance etc.  

    The questions included clues that would allow a young person in middle school or a senior to be able to select the correct answer 60 percent of the time. Students created 3-D game pawns using a 3-D printer at the Innovation Center at Garfield Heights Public Library, designed art work for the board game and game play. 

Another team of biomedical engineering and law students were awarded an NSF I-Corps grant and conducted 27 cus-tomer interviews with nurses, aids and administrators. They shifted the focus to design a digital chart recorder transcriber to be used by nursing aids, and a wearable nurse’s toolkit.