Carrie Heeter is a Principal Investigator in the GEL Lab (Games, Entertainment and Learning) and Creative Director for Virtual University Design and Technology. She has studied and designed interactive experiences from the early days of multimedia to the exciting promise of virtual reality and the amazing reach of the Internet. Games bring all of those strands together with remarkable potential, and social media extends them into new domains. Heeter teaches graduate classes in serious games and design research. She specializes in designing meaningful experiences that incorporate emerging technologies. In the 1990s she and her teams developed The Microbe Zoo, making discoveries in microbial ecology accessible to kids, The Personal Communicator, a text to ASL communication, and Breast Cancer Lighthouse, an early “virtual support group.” Between 2000 and 2010, her work included Wonder Walls (child friendly “bulletin boards” designed to encourage a sense of wonder) and other multimedia experiences with curator Norm Lownds and the Michigan 4H Children’s Garden. She directed development of the Longitudinal Survey Engine with Jim Anthony in the Department of Epidemiology. She has conducted extensive research into gender and games, was co-editor of Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New perspectives in gender and gaming and editor-in-chief of Investigaming, an online gateway to research about gender, gaming, and computing. She co-developed Brain Powered Games with Brian and Jillian Winn to help aging brains exercise specific cognitive functions. Heeter is working with colleagues at MSU and Georgia Tech University to develop approaches to collecting game analytics, and to examine the relationships between gaming motivations and game design. She is working with MSU bio-ethicist Leonard Fleck and geneticists at Stanford University and San Francisco State University to develop the 21st Century DNA Communities project, which would combine democratic deliberation, gaming, and social networking to help create more informed citizens, make it easy for them to reflect on social and personal issues raised by new genetic discoveries, and provide a means by which participants might impact policy. Heeter also innovates with technology in her teaching of hybrid, fully online and enhanced courses.
National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow
National Merit Scholar

Office Hours:
Tuesdays 6pm-7pm via Skype or phone