White Paper: Transforming Education Through Interactive Advocacy Gaming
How Rebuilding Lives Equips Learners with Data-Driven Decision-Making for Social Change
Published by Dolphin Voyager, LLC
🚀 Executive Summary
Dolphin Voyager, LLC is pioneering game-based learning for civic engagement, creating immersive, research-backed educational tools that address real-world social issues. Our flagship game, Rebuilding Lives: Finding a Place in the Sun, offers an interactive simulation that helps players understand houselessness and mental health while equipping them with policy awareness and advocacy skills.
🎯 Key Takeaways:
- ✅ Demonstrates the effectiveness of interactive learning for social issues
- ✅ Builds empathy & decision-making in real-world scenarios
- ✅ Supports educators, policymakers & community leaders through research-backed learning tools
📢 Free Canvas Course Available:
🔗 Access Rebuilding Lives Free Course
📌 Introduction
Bridging the Gap Between Awareness and Action
Houselessness and mental health are complex societal challenges that require both systemic understanding and empathy. Traditional education fails to capture the real-world complexities of these issues, leaving learners without actionable knowledge.
Why Interactive Learning?
📖 Studies show that game-based learning improves: ✔ Knowledge retention through active participation (Batada et al., 2022)
✔ Civic engagement by fostering prosocial behavior (Erreygers et al., 2019)
✔ Real-world decision-making skills in simulated environments (Rubin et al., 2021)
Rebuilding Lives is designed to integrate these research-backed strategies, offering learners a transformative, immersive experience.
📚 Research Foundations
The Science Behind Empathy-Driven Learning
🔍 Research confirms that immersive storytelling significantly impacts learning:
📖 Batada et al. (2022): Data-driven models improve policy analysis & advocacy skills.
📖 Erreygers et al. (2019): Online platforms enhance youth prosocial behavior & civic responsibility.
📖 Kang et al. (2024): Embodied learning strategies improve conceptual understanding & emotional engagement.
📖 Kerr et al. (2020): Narrative-based coaching games enhance social responsibility & self-mastery.
📖 Rubin et al. (2021): Decision-making games influence real-world policy behaviors.
🧠 Rebuilding Lives applies these learning theories to create a game that teaches advocacy through interactive storytelling and real-world scenarios.
🎮 Game Design and Educational Objectives
How Rebuilding Lives Works
🎭 Scenario-Based Storytelling – Players take on the real-world role of advocate and engage with policymakers and individuals facing houselessness and make critical decisions affecting communities.
📊 Data-Driven Decision-Making – Players allocate resources across housing, mental health services & law enforcement, seeing how trade-offs shape community outcomes.
👥 Stakeholder Engagement – Players interact with government officials, nonprofits & grassroots organizations, balancing public opinion, funding, and advocacy efforts.
🎯 Goal: Equip learners with empathy-driven problem-solving to tackle real-world policy challenges.
📈 Implementation & Accessibility
📚 Free Canvas Course for Educators
The Rebuilding Lives Canvas course offers: ✔ Lesson Plans – Aligned with civics, social studies & social justice curricula
✔ Student Assessments – Evaluating advocacy skill development
✔ Educator Resources – Supporting in-class discussions on houselessness, mental health & civic responsibility
📢 Free Access:
🔗 Explore Rebuilding Lives Free Course
🌍 Scalability & Impact
Who Can Use Rebuilding Lives?
🏫 High School & College Civics Courses – Teaching government & social justice
📢 Community Advocacy Groups – Training future policy leaders & activists
📊 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programs – Educating professionals on housing & mental health policies
🌍 Global Human Rights Education – Expanding game frameworks for international social issues
📌 Next Steps: ✅ Pilot Programs – Implement in schools & advocacy groups
✅ NGO & Policy Partnerships – Expand real-world applications
✅ Ongoing Research – Assess learning outcomes & engagement metrics
📍 Visit: 🔗 DolphinVoyager.com
📍 Explore the Free Course: 🔗 Canvas Course
📖 References
📚 Batada, A., Thomas, A. E., & Holtz, D. (2022). Utilizing a Data-to-Action Approach to Cultivate Policy Research and Advocacy Skills in Community-Engaged Health Promotion Courses. Pedagogy in Health Promotion, 8(3), 216-223.
📚 Erreygers, S., Pabian, S., & Vandebosch, H. (2019). Development and validation of a multidimensional instrument to measure adolescents’ online prosocial behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 93, 238-247.
📚 Kang, S., Lu, M., Black, J. B., & Kim, S. (2024). Mindful Movements Matter: Differentiating Active Body Movements in Underprivileged Students’ Learning of Physics Concepts. Research in Science & Technological Education.
📚 Kerr, C., Andrews, T., & Holt, P. (2020). Narrative Coaching and the Use of Self: A Coaching Board Game to Enhance Self-Mastery and Personal Transformation. International Journal of Evidence-Based Coaching and Mentoring, 18(2), 69-83.
📚 Rubin, O., Vandenberghe, R., & Chrétien, L. (2021). In-Game as in Life: Linking Decision-Making to Real-World Behavior. Collabra: Psychology, 7(1), 28115.
📚 Dolphin Voyager. (2024). The Game. Retrieved from dolphinvoyager.com
📚 Canvas Commons. (2025). Rebuilding Lives Course. Retrieved from Canvas Free Course
M.Ed. Educational Technology Program 