Lubbock, TX — My Fulbright Fellowship ended months ago, sadly cut short due to ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The program’s abrupt end resulted in some unfinished business …
… but it didn’t shut us down completely. From bringing Taipei back to Texas in March to ongoing data analysis and writing projects with dear colleague Dr. JihHsuan “Tammy” Lin, we’ve kept our Tech-NCCU partnership going pretty strong.
I’d heard through the grapevine that my (short) time at NCCU had gone well, and that was a good feeling — we moved our class online rather dramatically, and we had to make quite a few changes to make sure that it all tracked well. I wasn’t sure when I’d get to return to their curriculum, but I was happy for the contributions that I was able to make.
And then? An opportunity. =)
About two weeks ago, Dr. Lin reached out to me with the idea for an international collaboration: a team-taught course in which I’d join her Fall “Games and Society” course (along with students from Texas Tech) as a subject matter expert. Her idea for the class would be for:
- Our team here in Lubbock to record video content — lecture content, but also on-screen student discussions.
- We’d ship those videos over to her NCCU students, who would watch them and follow our Tech-side discussions.
- NCCU students would then engage the videos via asynchronous chat (discussion boards), adding their own layer of analysis.
- Our Tech students can then engage the students in the same discussion boards.
I mean heck, 2020 has been the bellwether of “innovative” classroom strategies, so a hybrid-“time-shifted but also sort of not”-recorded-chat-international class? Why not. =)
On the Tech side, CMI3100 was born. A 1.0 credit-hour option for Tech students interested in learning a bit more about video games and virtual reality research. One week into Fall semester? We had to double enrollment numbers, as our “independent study” grew to 10 enrolled students and 11 more guests (including many Tech graduate students, faculty, and staff).
I’m eager to see how this weekend goes, as we’ll have our first of six recording sessions. I chose a topic rather closer to my own heart for this first class — an ongoing discussion about the perceived cognitive, emotional, physical, and social demands of video games. Here, students will engage our lab’s interactivity-as-demand model, as well as some of my co-authored work on gaming and emotions.
UPDATE: Our first class video, below:
Thumbnails from our slide deck from our first class. Flip through the slides to get an idea of what we’re chatting about. We’ll share a video soon. =)
For all of this? I guess then that it’s pretty appropriate to move my Fulbright tag to my Tech campus office. Both make me smile, and both make me quite proud:
… and an added benefit of the nameplate? I feel a continued connection with Taiwan: my time there, my heritage long before, and opportunities yet to come. Plus? It’s more incentive to keep the Mandarin lessons going. =)
NOTE: If you’re interested in listening in our any of our chats, send me an email – nick.bowman@ttu.edu. I’m happy to share the Zoom link.