Millipede Creative Development

Teaming up with our friends and instructional designers, DK2, our consortium was the successful tenderer for EMA’s learning resource development project.

Using applicable curriculum frameworks as a basis, Dingo Creek engages primary and secondary age students in the process of identifying risks from natural disasters to their immediate community, and emergency preparedness and preparations in the Australian environment.

Ultimately, Dingo Creek raises awareness of local risks of natural disaster and emergency management processes, and enhances community resilience to the effects of natural disaster.

Bringing life to bureaucratic process

The challenge for the Dingo Creek learning object was to balance the text and task dense Emergency Risk Management (ERM) process with effective interactive and educational tasks that would ensure and sustain learner engagement.

This was achieved by creating a game-based ‘back to the future’ scenario. The learning object opens with an unidentifiable disaster scenario in the fictitious Australian town of Dingo Creek.

The learner is then invited to undertake a mission to return to the past and develop an ERM Strategy for the Dingo Creek community, threatened by potential risks to their livelihood, environment and personal safety. Learners access local residents, mine experts for information, identify and mitigate risks and ultimately develop a community action plan for the future.

Local colour and community diversity

The treatment of the characters throughout Dingo Creek has proved popular with students. Each character has a unique personality, visual appearance and set of opinions, and appears within a distinct visual and sonic environment. Creative links are drawn between the characters, their relationship to the community and occupation, and their views on how best to manage the environment.

The animated disaster scene that appears after completing the decision making process has received positive feedback from students; the depiction of a Dingo Creek streetscape in various states of disrepair (complete with floating cows) reinforces the importance of student decisions and provides a humorous and compelling climax to the activity.

Self paced learning

Individual student progress may be saved and returned to at any stage, enabling flexible usage in classroom situations where time may be limited, and permitting the learning objectives to be explored over a period of time.

Dingo Creek was officially launched by Attorney-General Robert McClelland on the 28th October 2008.