Lab Safety: The Interactive Game of "Don’t Endanger the Owls"

SCOPE: To create an interactive learning module to help reinforce the concept of maintaining lab safety where hazardous materials are used in various laboratories. Academic laboratories where hazardous materials are used are potentially dangerous places. Taking the necessary precautions to avoid unnecessary hazards is paramount for the safety of all involved. In this course, you will learn about lab safety through an interactive game called “Don’t Endanger the Owls”. The characters in the game include Wise Owl, Owlet, and the Zombie Squirrels. Owlet is the student figure and Wise Owl is Owlet’s sage advisor / professor figure. In the game, your goal is to stop the Zombie Squirrels from spreading their Zombiegen by finding an “Anti-Zombiegen” in the lab that will counteract the effects of the Zombiegen. In order to find the Anti-Zombiegen, you will journey through three lab rooms: the biology lab, the chemistry lab and the analytical lab. Along the way, you will learn safe laboratory practices. In the end, if you follows safe laboratory practices, you will find the Anti-Zombiegen and saves the campus from the Zombiegen outbreak. “Don’t Endanger the Owls” is a collaboration between the instructors of Rice University’s Responsible Conduct of Research Graduate Course, Rice’s Environmental Health and Safety and HyperWindows Inc.