The Digital Storygame Project, the Lopez Foundation Inc., and LCA Vantage Healthcare are launching an innovative health-care technology course focusing on K-12 education and the integration of STEM and the Arts and Humanities.

The groundbreaking curriculum empowers students to explore healthy decisions by incorporating creative coding, design thinking, and decision-making into standards-based health and nutrition courses. Funded by the American Rescue Plan, the curriculum will be piloted at the Dupont Park Seventh Day Adventist School in Washington, DC, offering underserved students in sixth through eighth grade a weekly course on health and wellness and the technology used in health care for administrative, clinical, and facility needs. Central to the curriculum is the creation of original, interactive digital storygames using the open-source software program Twine.

The Digital Storygame Project (DSP) was founded in 2015 by Mike Sell of the Department of English and is co-led with Rachel Schiera, assistant professor of education in the Department of Teacher Education at Lander University, and graduate of IUP’s doctoral program in Administration and Leadership Studies. Key to the DSP’s cross-curricular approach is Zeeshan Siddique, a doctoral student in the IUP graduate program in Literature and Criticism and a DSP team member for the past four years.

At the heart of the DSP is Twine, an open-source software that enables the creation of digital, interactive storygames that resemble Choose Your Own Adventure books. Most people can learn the basics of Twine in less than 10 minutes. The challenge (and fun!) of Twine comes when students design storygames that achieve specific, rigorous, standards-based learning objectives. That will be the case with the teachers and students at the Dupont Park School. The DSP doesn’t train teachers in the conventional sense. Rejecting the “one size fits all” approach to technology, the DSP uses an in-classroom workshop model that provides hands-on support to teachers and students. Teachers collaborate with DSP team members to create customized, standards-based learning plans and effective pedagogies to empower their students to design original interactive digital texts using evidence-based practices. While designed originally for the ELA classroom, we are excited to see its application in other learning areas, particularly health and nutrition. The health and technology curriculum will be piloted at Dupont, then brought to other schools in Washington, DC and Pittsburgh.

Vince Lopez, founder/CEO of LCA Vantage and the Lopez Foundation and a 2017 graduate of IUP, says, “We’re excited about this unique and truly impactful opportunity to teach and inspire the next community of innovators, techies, entrepreneurs, and health-care professionals. As an IUP graduate, I’m thrilled to be working with IUP faculty and students to bring the IUP spirit of innovation in STEM, the arts, and humanities to the students and teachers of Washington, DC and beyond.”