An interdisciplinary project to assess next-generation learning through computer-facilitated networked play has earned Northeastern a $498,803 grant from the National Science Foundation. To win the grant, the project’s principal investigators, Jacqueline Isaacs, Thomas Cullinane, James Benneyan, and Donna Qualters submitted a prototype of Shortfall Online, a computer game whose players act as decision-makers in an automobile supply chain and must consider the design, civic, and business implications of caring for the environment.

"Students today are raised in a different context in our society," Isaacs said. "They are learning in a different way and games like Shortfall might be more effective teaching tools." Over the course of the next three years, a cross-disciplinary team of engineers, game designers, and educational assessors from the department of mechanical and industrial engineering and the department of visual arts and multimedia studies will explore the extent to which the student players increase their understanding of complex tradeoffs among environmental, economic, and technological issues in the auto industry through repeated play of Shortfall Online.