In Canada, the City of Oshawa recently became a member of the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities to promote healthy, active aging and good quality of life for older residents. Part of this strategy includes educating municipal employees on age-friendly cultural competencies. To facilitate this, we have developed an innovative and immersive virtual environment that couples serious gaming with a gamified educational network learning management system. The virtual environment will provide an interactive and engaging learning platform to teach age-friendly cultural competencies to municipal staff.

This mixed-method research addresses two problems: 1) the need to understand more deeply the lived experiences of individuals with mental illness to inform the design of a virtual serious game (VSG) and; 2) the need for more accessible and interactive mental health VSGs for nursing student learning before attending community placements. We began with an Ontario-wide collection of individual narratives about living with mental illness using qualitative methods and then applied the findings in two ways. First, we incorporated the person-centered feedback into the serious VSGs’ storyline, and secondly, we developed and refined the VSG prototype. Next, we will implement the VSG into the nursing curriculum for evaluation of learning outcomes.