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

LabSafety.1x is a robust and highly engaging online game, called Don’t Endanger the Owls, designed to introduce the players to the concepts of safe laboratory practices in an adaptable learning environment that may scale for large or distance courses. Relying on content learning and user engagement/satisfaction, this game will help identify the key areas that the students need to work on and actively improve on those weaknesses. The course element comes with a user guide and lesson planning tips for teachers. Don’t Endanger the Owls is a collaboration between the instructors of Rice University’s Responsible Conduct of Research Graduate Course and Rice’s Environmental Health and Safety and the Center for Technology in Teaching & Learning staff.

This laboratory safety game may be used to reinforce laboratory safety concepts in various courses such as the Responsible Conduct of Research and various laboratory-based courses. On its own, this game does not fully satisfy the laboratory safety training required by federal agencies and therefore should be viewed as a supplemental resource to help bolster such training.