Seminar Talk 2015-03-11

“Digital Games for Health: Research, Design, and Implementation”

Debra Lieberman, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Digital Games Research
UC Santa Barbara

Wednesday, March 11, 2015 – 2:30pm
Donald Bren Hall, Room 2011 (Bldg. 314)
http://communications.uci.edu//documents/pdf/UCI_14_map_campus.pdf

Abstract: The health games field is growing in innovative directions. In this talk, Debra Lieberman, director of the Center for Digital Games Research at UC Santa Barbara, and former director of the Health Games Research national program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will provide an overview of current health games and research on their effectiveness. Debra’s research focuses on processes of motivation, learning, and behavior change with digital media and games.

About the Speaker: Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., is a media researcher at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches in the Department of Communication and directs the university’s Center for Digital Games Research www.cdgr.ucsb.edu. From 2007 to 2013 at UC Santa Barbara she directed Health Games Research www.healthgamesresearch.org, a national program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to advance the research, design, and effectiveness of health games.

Debra’s research focuses on processes of motivation, learning, and behavior change with digital media and games. She also consults for health organizations, education agencies, and media and technology companies to improve user engagement and to help design and evaluate digital media and games for entertainment, learning, and health, for people of all ages. She has consulted for Apple, Broderbund, Disney, Kaiser Permanente, Knowledge Adventure, HopeLab, The Learning Company, Philips Healthcare (Motiva telehealth system), Pixar, WebTV, WestEd, Zowie Intertainment, and others.

Prior to UC Santa Barbara, Debra was VP of Research at Click Health, where she directed the research and design of health video games made for the Super Nintendo console, and prior to that she was a faculty member in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington. Debra holds an Ed.M., specializing in Media and Learning, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she worked with Sesame Streetresearchers and producers to develop educational TV programs for children, and she holds a Ph.D. in Communication Research from Stanford University.