University of Southern California

USC Network Culture Project

USC Annenberg School for Communication

	Learning in the 21st Century 05.02.08

Modern Prometheus is a game designed to teach students about issues of science, technology and ethics through experiential learning.

Situated within the context of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Modern Prometheus encourages learning about ethics, particularly as they relate to science and technology, by immersing students in an imaginative play space and requiring them to make choices that affect game play. By making ethics about the choices they make and the effects of those choices, rather than prescriptive rules for conduct or behaviors, students can better understand the complexities of ethical judgment and better evaluate their decisions and how their decisions affect others.

Our study aims to better understand the role that computer games may have within educational environments: specifically, whether putting a novel in the context of a computer game alters the student's understanding of literature and/or enhances their appreciation of the novel; whether the experience of confronting ethical issues in games translates to a better understanding of real world ethics; and how issues of identity, immersion, and experience impact learning, particularly in relation to extra-textual aspects of literature such as art, history, and ethics.