Kennesaw State recently completed a collaborative project with Railserve, Inc. to streamline safety training for Railserve employees.
The project, which started four years ago, involved KSU game development students creating a 3D simulation to display the safety requirements from the written Railserve instruction manuals for employees.
Before the students could begin working, they had to learn the manuals themselves, so the students went to a Railserve site in Valdosta where they shadowed employees and performed tasks to get hands-on experience for the simulation.
Dr. Jon Preston, a KSU professor of software engineering and game design, was one of the individuals overseeing the project.
“When you go from research and development experience into something that goes into production, you have to be careful with the results,” Preston said. “When you say you control something with WASD, game creators know the meaning, but someone with little game experience may not know that.”
Despite the disconnect, Preston described the students as having been “energized and excited to use what they learned in the classroom on a real project to help people.”
The students completed the project at KSU this year, but Railserve hired three students who worked on the project as software engineers for the continued work on the simulation.
Preston said that the end of the four-year-long project was “bittersweet, but gratifying to be passing the torch from an internal project at KSU to an external project for industry workers.”
The project also opens the door for businesses to contact KSU for other projects. The Railserve collaboration shows what KSU can produce, and in the wake of its release to the market, other businesses will be able to see what KSU has done and contact the university for help with their own projects.
When asked about the future of project collaborations with KSU and external businesses, Preston said he is aiming to have every capstone project within the college.
“Our goal is to have every capstone project funded by larger companies, so this is just the beginning,” Preston said.
While this collaboration is not the first of its nature for KSU, Preston said that it is one of the largest.
“This project is indicative of what KSU students are capable of,” Preston said. “Not only do they have the fundamental theoretical knowledge, but they have the ability to put that into work to help companies and people.”