These are not your average video games: there are no car chases, no battlefields and no farms. Instead, students play this game to learn.

Virtual · The “Life Underground” project will imitate the style of “Intimation,” a virtual world designed by graduate student Kyle Gorman. – Courtesy of Kyle Gorman

The Institute for Multimedia Literacy and the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences teamed up with the Education and Public Outreach component of the NASA-funded project “Life Underground.”

The multimedia component corresponds to research being done at a NASA-funded center that looks at life in the Earth’s subsurface, micro-organisms that live in the ground, so that NASA might eventually use this project’s procedures on other planets and moons to determine if there is life outside Earth.

The multimedia project, which will be designed as a 3D game called Unity, seeks to encourage cognitive development through the use of interactive video games.

Holly Willis, the director of academic programs at IML, hopes the project can communicate NASA’s research in a way that will excite another generation about science.

“Communicating [NASA’s] scientific findings to a broad audience is one of the things they’re very committed to,” Willis said.

The project, designed for sixth grade students studying earth science, seeks to develop an understanding of microbial life systems that live underground on Earth and other planets.

“The project itself is investigating life deep underground in conditions that are very extreme,” Willis said.

IML will work with professors and undergraduate students across the university to study and research the changing nature of literacy across different media. The team is developing software that allows sixth graders to learn about microbial life systems by playing the role of either an underground microorganism or a scientific investigator.

The project, inspired by James Gee’s 2003 book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, highlights the vital contribution that game-based learning has on education.

As a virtual microorganism, students can navigate a simulation of the subterranean world. “We hope that the virtual world will be deeply engaging and fun, while also being educational,” Willis said.

In addition to the 3D game, Willis said they also hope to launch an educational website including videos showcasing the team’s research. The project, which began in January, is expected to take three years to complete.

The scientific research that corresponds with the video game  will take place over the next five years. The center has a team of eight researchers from USC, CalTech, the Desert Research Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.