Dwell
Dwell™ is a tabletop simulation game to teach about poverty’s impact on one’s choices, health, livelihood, communities, and families. The game was created by an interdisciplinary team led by faculty from the University of Miami’s School of Communication and School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS). In the game, players roleplay as a provided character who must support and care for themselves and possibly an entire household. Dwell™ is primarily intended to be a facilitated game, particularly when played by multiple sets of players concurrently, as a curriculum module or part of a workshop.
By the end of the game, players should be able to:
- Discuss how poverty impacts health, healthcare choices, and healthcare access
- List new facts and statistics about how poverty impacts people
- Apply greater empathy when caring for others who are economically disadvantaged
- Begin developing new strategies to help educate and connect economically disadvantaged people with community resources
Awards
- Runner-up award in the Best in Show, Academic Games category; 2019 International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH)’s SimVentors Showcase, Games Arcade
Funding
- Co-Principal Investigator with Jill Sanko, Deborah Salani and Yui Matsuda on “Dwell: An Interactive Tabletop Simulation Game Teaching How Poverty Impacts Health and Healthcare Access” funded by Center for Communication, Culture, and Change (4C), University of Miami, June 2017 – December 2018, $5,000
Related Press
- Gutierrez, B. (2018, October.) ‘Dwell’ tabletop game shows students daily struggles of poverty. Retrieved from https://news.miami.edu/stories/2018/10/dwell-shows-students-daily-struggle-of-poverty.html | Link
Exhibitions
- Tran, L., Sanko & J. Salani, D. (2019, January). Dwell. Game exhibited at International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare conference in the SimVentor’s Games Arcade, San Antonio, TX. |PDF
- Tran, L., Sanko & J. Salani, D. (2018, October). Dwell. Game exhibited at Meaningful Play, East Lansing, MI. | Link