November 1, 2022 | UConn Athletics

UConn is fully entering the cord-cutting era of live and on-demand digital video.

Coming later this month, fans and followers of UConn Athletics will have a new avenue for absorbing all things Huskies and the University of Connecticut: UConn+. The university’s own sports-centric streaming platform will surface original and exclusive content to fans such as features, live events, profiles, coaches’ shows, highlights and other on-demand content.

UConn+ will be widely available on streaming services such as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku, and accessible via the UConn mobile app and uconnhuskies.com.

The new service, which will be a first-of-its-kind in college athletics to combine live and original content, is expected to launch in late November with additional features being rolled out after its release. Until that time, streaming content will continue to be available on uconnhuskies.com.

“UConn+ has the potential to elevate the visibility of UConn Athletics, and I’m grateful for our overarching relationship with LEARFIELD, in which its LEARFIELD Studios and SIDEARM Sports businesses can help us further expand our reach and promote the excellence of our student-athletes, coaches, and the University of Connecticut,” said David Benedict, Director of Athletics. “UConn already boasts championship programs and provides top-quality experiences in state-of-the-art venues for fans and student-athletes alike. With UConn+, we’re adding the capability to engage UConn Nation with exclusive feature content and live sports like never before. This platform will only strengthen our global brand and create more opportunities for success.”

A New Approach to Video Content Delivery at UConn

Benedict’s ambitious vision for a comprehensive streaming digital presence has been in the works for more than a year. While UConn will develop much of the programming internally – including coaches’ shows, press conferences and other mini-features – LEARFIELD Studios has placed production staff on the ground in Storrs supported by a central production team.

“We’re proud of our longtime relationship with UConn and recognize the tremendous added value that UConn+ will bring to Husky fans and to our corporate partners,” said Tom Murphy, general manager for LEARFIELD’s UConn Sports Properties, the university’s athletics multimedia rightsholder. “The sponsors who look to align their brand with the UConn Huskies’ brand soon will have a new platform to creatively connect with fans 24/7/365.”

This dedicated crew will produce more in-depth feature programs, including content geared toward showcasing the various aspects of life as a student-athlete on campus like THE BREAKDOWN  a five-part mini-series about 2022 UConn Football training camp, and THE STANDARD – a new mini-series that offers an inside look at UConn women’s basketball. A 24/7 real-time programming stream of content is also planned for possible development.

“UConn+ can be a game changer for the university,” said Tysen Kendig, UConn’s Vice President for Communications who began exploration of a digital sports network for UConn Athletics in 2021. “Content is unquestionably king, and our audiences increasingly have a thirst for more video, more features, and more multimodal, on-demand ways to consume it. UConn+ is changing the way we produce content in-house, and the model we’ve developed in partnership with LEARFIELD and SIDEARM leverages their considerable assets and expertise to give UConn Nation unprecedented content and access to Husky athletics and the greater university.”

“Few other major universities in the country competing at the highest level of Division I athletics own the rights and have the wherewithal to produce and deliver a majority of its own live sports content,” he added. “While this landscape is constantly shifting, we are now better positioned to meet the demands of our audiences and have the means to make most of our home Olympic sports and related content across all of our 20 programs directly available to more people than ever before.”

Growth Potential Across the University

UConn students will directly benefit from this endeavor through increased experiential learning opportunities. UConn Athletics and the university’s Digital Media and Design (DMD) program in the School of Fine Arts partnered last fall to create an athletics creative agency. The agency, developed with UConn+ in mind, will give students a chance to earn academic credit under faculty supervision in documentary film production, motion graphic design, and other areas that geared toward enhancing program options.

“We were thrilled to help provide a solution for UConn athletics when they approached us about this endeavor,” said Anne D’Alleva, UConn’s interim provost and dean of the School of Fine Arts. “Our DMD students have been highly sought for years by the likes of NBC Sports, ESPN, and other mainstream media outlets because of the exceptionally high quality of our digital media academic program. UConn+ and this new creative agency will provide additional real-world experience right here on campus, and has generated great excitement among our students and faculty – all of whom enthusiastically bleed blue.”

Beyond athletics, UConn+ also will feature non-sports programs. Initial programming concepts include a research magazine, a talk-show podcast about UConn people and programs, and health promotion spots. An interview series hosted by President Radenka Maric, “Worth Repeating,” is already in production, and includes head football coach Jim Mora as the first guest. The multimedia production team in University Communications, with staff in Storrs and Farmington, is fully integrated as part of UConn+, and will be responsible for providing this additional menu of content.

“Athletics is not just a tremendous point of pride for our community, it’s a front porch that helps bring people into the front door of this amazing university,” said Kendig. “UConn+ gives us another vehicle for shining a light on the academic and research champions here that positively impact Connecticut and the human condition. The ideas are limitless, and we believe this endeavor has great potential to grow over time.”

Stay tuned to uconnhuskies.com and UConn’s social media platforms for more information and content pertaining to UConn+ in the weeks ahead.

Original Article via UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2022/11/university-to-launch-uconn-streaming-digital-network/

August 10, 2022 | Anna Zarra Aldrich ’20 (CLAS), Office of the Vice President for Research

An interdisciplinary group of UConn researchers is leading an effort to empower high school students to become “Eco-Digital” storytellers in their communities.

The science behind protecting the environment is only one piece of addressing the climate crisis; people need to communicate this information and the stories of those impacted by climate change to the public to inspire necessary action.

With this understanding, a group of interdisciplinary UConn researchers are working on a grant that will support high school students in designing multimedia projects that focus on local environmental issues in their communities. This work is supported by a $1.35 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

This project will merge environmental science, geospatial technology, digital media and education through an ambitious collaboration between faculty across disciplines. Laura Cisneros, assistant extension professor of natural resources and the environment (NRE) and director of the UConn Natural Resources Conservation Academy (NRCA), is the PI on this project. Other researchers involved in the project are Todd Campbell, department head and professor of curriculum and instruction in the Neag School of Education; Cary Chadwick, extension educator with the UConn Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR); Heather Elliott-Famularo, department head and professor of digital media and design; Anna Lindemann assistant professor of digital media and design; David Dickson, extension educator and interim director of CLEAR; and Nicole Freidenfelds, extension educator and NRCA program coordinator.

The College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources and the Neag School have been collaborating for a decade, working to bring learning opportunities to youth and adults so they can carry out local environmental projects through the NRCA. However, Cisneros says these efforts have missed a critical component: communication.

“The missing piece here is how these individuals can reconnect projects back to their community in a creative and innovative way, and really, that science communication piece,” Cisneros says.

This led the extension team to connect with the Department of Digital Media and Design over their shared interests in improving scientific communication skills and diversifying the voices of people telling environmental stories. Both STEM and digital media and design fields have historically been dominated by a white male perspective.

“We thought that if we could bring people doing the scientific research together with the people telling the stories about that scientific research and do that by encouraging new perspectives and new voices, especially within the state, well, that was what got us all really excited,” Elliott-Famularo says. “This is how we came up with the notion of developing ‘Eco-Digital Storytellers.’”

With this grant, the team will work with high schools in New Haven, Hartford, and Willimantic, which serve diverse student bodies.

Over the course of three years, the program aims to serve 270 high school students across 54 school pods. Each “pod” will include a small group of high school students and their teacher.

The team will teach the pods how to engage in educational storytelling, using geospatial technology and digital media tools as vessels to convey their messages. Participants will be taught how to use a mapping application, called ArcGIS Storymaps, to create interactive online narratives using maps and digital media. They will also learn basic digital media and design skills, such as video and animation, to share engaging stories about their environmental projects.

“We’re really thinking about narrative structures as a way for people to express their identities and their thoughts and actions about environmental issues and then using technology to support those narratives,” Lindemann says.

“I believe it’s going to open up an avenue to connect to and communicate with young audiences, on their level,” Chadwick says. “I’m really excited about the storytelling aspect of this. I think it has a real potential to reach and engage with new audiences.”

The pods will apply these skills to a project addressing a local environmental concern. These may include issues like endangered species, protecting coastal towns from the impacts of climate change, water quality, wildlife monitoring, or environmental justice based on the unique needs of each community.

“It’s really community driven and community informed,” Cisneros says.

In working with these underrepresented communities the researchers say they aim to not merely teach them a set of skills, but to learn from and with these communities.

“As we engage, we want to go beyond just thinking about how we provide access for programming,” Campbell says. “But instead, we want to let community members – students and teachers – shape the programming and let us try to stretch ourselves to recognize more expansive versions of what it could mean to do such consequential work in the communities and how we can provide support while also engaging in learning beside communities.”

“It’s going to be based on them identifying the issues they want to address in their communities,” Dickson says. “We try not to presuppose what those issues are because something we may think is an issue they may not be as impacted or motivated by, so we try to let students determine what they see as an environmental issue in their community. It’s finding that balance between helping lead them to the types of projects they could do and them charting their own adventure.”

UConn students will also play an important role in the project. In Fall 2023, a group of undergraduate UConn students will take a course to learn how to serve as “Near-Peer Mentors” for the high school pods. The students, who will come from environmental sciences, biological sciences, or digital media and design programs, will learn how to serve as culturally sustaining and trauma-informed mentors. They will also learn how to use the relevant technologies and about Connecticut-specific environmental problems. In total, the program will support the training of 36 mentors.

 

Empowering college students to be mentors who will then inspire high school students is one of the really exciting and novel parts of this project. — Anna Lindemann

 

In the late fall through spring, the mentors will work with their pods to help teach technical skills and support them in developing their projects.

“Empowering college students to be mentors who will then inspire high school students is one of the really exciting and novel parts of this project,” Lindemann says.

Campbell will lead the research portion of this project focused on cultural learning pathways. The research will focus on how those involved in the project learn as individuals and groups, with a focus on the role of identity. Campbell will collect qualitative and quantitative data from participants about if and how they feel their work is recognized, by themselves and others, as meaningful.

To support this all-important recognition, this program will include an end-of-year showcase for students to present their projects.

These findings will provide insight into how to ensure the contributions of underrepresented individuals are valued and recognized in the E-STEAM (Environmental Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) field.

Campbell will also collect information about how students’ interest in E-STEAM careers changes over the course of their engagement in the project as they interact with professionals working in these fields.

“Our research focus is really grounded in identity and so we’re looking at ways we can support that identity development that might connect them to the [E]STEAM fields,” Campbell says.

 

Follow UConn Research on Twitter & LinkedIn.

Original Article via UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2022/08/e-steam-ahead-ct-high-schoolers-to-become-eco-digital-storytellers-through-interdisciplinary-grant/

June 22, 2022 | Shawn Kornegay – Neag School of Education

|‘After a year of careful planning, the Neag School of Education’s Two Summers Educational Technology program and the UConn School of Fine Art’s Digital Media and Design (DMD) program co-hosted the inaugural Frontiers in Playful Learning conference from June 1 – 3, 2022.’|

After a year of careful planning, the Neag School of Education’s Two Summers Educational Technology program and the UConn School of Fine Art’s Digital Media and Design (DMD) program co-hosted the inaugural Frontiers in Playful Learning conference from June 1 – 3, 2022.

The three-day conference attracted roughly 55 in-person attendees from around the U.S. (Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and more) with additional national and international participation through live-streamed sessions. Most attendees were scholars and graduate students from research universities, but some very dedicated K-12 teachers and industry professionals also took the time to attend.

How it All Started

Organized by Stephen Slota, who has dual faculty appointments in both the UConn Learning Sciences (formerly known as the Cognition, Instruction, & Learning Technology program) and DMD programs, the idea to host Frontiers came about after a series of conversations between playful learning scholars who felt they had fallen out of touch through the pandemic. “Although there are several other events centered on game-based education, we wanted to target game-and play-based teaching and research in higher education, specifically,” said Slota.

“Bringing together a small, tightly-knit group of interdisciplinary experts seemed like a good first step,” remarked Slota.

The UConn Two Summers Educational Technology program (among the Top 15 in the U.S. according to SuccessfulStudent.org) has become a nationally-recognized hub for playful teaching and learning research due in large part to their frequently-cited (2012) Review of Educational Research meta-analysis Our Princess is in Another Castle: A Review of Trends in Serious Gaming for Education and (2017) edited volume Exploding the Castle: Rethinking How Video Games & Game Mechanics Can Shape the Future of Education.

“What’s great about the community is its interdisciplinary nature, which creates points of contact that can’t be achieved with a narrow focus on just one discipline or role.”
— Assistant Professor-in-Residence Stephen Slota

“We recognized that our unique status positioned us to revitalize and organize the field around a set of shared goals by welcoming teachers, researchers, and designers to UConn’s campus as part of our community of practice,” Slota noted.

In addition to reengaging game- and play-based instructors and scholars, Slota and other Frontiers attendees sought to explore means of enhancing their individual and collaborative efforts. For some, that meant finding co-researchers and co-authors; for others, it meant finding complementary skillsets that could facilitate design work.

“What’s great about the community is its interdisciplinary nature, which creates points of contact that can’t be achieved with a narrow focus on just one discipline or role,”  Slota.

What the Presenters and Attendees Thought

Anecdotal feedback indicated that attendees felt Frontiers was a “huge success,” and they seemed “impressed with how smoothly it went, especially since it was the first time hosting the event.”

Slota quickly recognized and credited Juliet Kapsis, the representative contact through UConn’s University Events and Conference Services, for her help. “She went above and beyond to work with various departments, programs, and people during the year it took to bring Frontiers together.”

According to one presenter, Trent Hergenrader, an assistant professor of English at the Rochester Institute of Technology, “What I appreciated about Frontiers is that everyone was interested in the process of teaching through the use of different kinds of games; to leverage deeper learning for our students.”

“In other words, it centered on games as teaching tools for higher education and, specifically, which games offer particular teaching and learning affordances (rather than a narrower focus just on how to use or make learning games),” he added.

Another presenter, Evan Torner, an associate professor of German Studies and Film/Media Studies from the University of Cincinnati, felt the three days he spent at Frontiers in Playful Learning were “some of the most productive [he’s] experienced in [his] career.”

“It was a healthy combination of presentations, discussions, postmortems, ideation, and play,” said Torner.

Tori Wagner ’20 MA, an incoming UConn Learning Sciences doctoral student and former Staples (Connecticut) High School physics teacher, greatly benefited from her connections with established experts and fellow up-and-coming playful learning professionals.

“The conference was a fantastic combination of presentations on cutting-edge research and informal discussions across various disciplines.”
— Incoming Doctoral Student Tori Wagner

“The conference was a fantastic combination of presentations on cutting-edge research and informal discussions across various disciplines,” said Wagner. “It was enlightening to gather perspectives of those outside my standard STEM circle. I’m excited to continue to learn from and work with the talented scholars I met as we contribute to the growing body of games and education research.”

Roger Travis, a UConn associate professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, was also complimentary about Frontiers. “We all know games teach, but conferences like Frontiers are helping us figure out how we can use that limitless power to engage and educate.”

Summing up a widely shared perspective, presenter Wendi Sierra, assistant professor of Game Studies at the Texas Christian University Honors College, observed, “With such a rich and diverse group of people, the conversations were amazing, and I walked away with so many new ideas. As a result, my list of books to read, games to play, and things to try in my classroom is (excitingly) overwhelming.”

Outcomes and Future Plans

Through the unanimously positive feedback, Slota concluded that “there was an agreement we should continue hosting Frontiers in Playful Learning on an annual basis,” and he felt “the most important outcome was networking.”

“That’s what’s wonderful about bringing together so many passionate, hard-working scholars—nerding out about topics we spend all our personal and professional time thinking about,” Slota articulated with a smile. “Not only did we meet face-to-face with folks we’d only ‘seen’ through video conferencing over the last three years, but we cultivated friendships that have already led to new scholarly discourse and publication efforts.”

Many presenters and attendees are already looking forward to another Frontiers, including Torner, who recommends “anyone interested in games and learning consider attending next year!”

Slota acknowledged that limiting attendance to fewer than 100 people allowed them to encourage one-on-one interactions during and between sessions, which proved to be “one of the best decisions we made.”

The organizers are planning for Frontiers in Playful Learning 2023 to run from May 31 – June 2, 2023. They’ll introduce minor changes to the session formats (including a peer-reviewed play track for demoing board, card, roleplaying, and video games). Still, the attendees were “so happy” with the first go-around that the organizers will focus on “simply expanding an already-solid infrastructure.”

Visit the conference website to learn more about Frontiers in Playful Learning, including an archive of photos and session recordings.

 

Original Article via UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2022/06/uconn-hosts-inaugural-frontiers-in-playful-learning-conference/

March 21, 2022 | Jaclyn Severance

Coding, Creating, and Changing the World

How the Stamford Startup Studio and the Werth Institute helped one student discover the innovator within

 

Reaj Uddin ‘23 (SFA) remembers studying for a school competition in the seventh grade to try to win $25.

“It was a social studies competition where whoever knows most of the countries in the world gets $25,” he says. “And I studied for like two days in a row, just to know all the countries in the world, just to get that $25 and impress my mom, to make her happy.”

Uddin came close to winning the competition, but ultimately fell just short.

He did not, however, fall short this past October when he brought his idea for a product to help streamline in-home recycling to a pitch night for Get Seeded, a program offered by UConn’s Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, or CCEI.

He won $1,000 through the pitch night to start developing his company, called EnviGreen Recycling. His original idea was to create a system for sorting, scanning, and crushing recyclables in the home to not only encourage more recycling, but to make the process easier for families like his.

Uddin and his family immigrated to Stamford from Bangladesh in 2009. The youngest of four sons, he was about 10 years old when they arrived in the United States – he had little formal education and spoke no English. He attended remedial schools to learn English before entering public elementary school in Stamford.

In high school, Uddin took a course on web development and found that writing code and building programs appealed to him.

“I didn’t know what to do with my life in high school,” he says. “Then I took this web development course, and it actually made sense to me. I was getting it really quickly and my teachers said, ‘you know, you should try doing this in the future.’ With coding, you can create solutions in almost any field – health, financial services, education technology – and it’s black and white, it’s either coded correctly or incorrectly. You can’t change that, and I actually like that kind of concept.”

Initially, Uddin didn’t plan on attending UConn, or any other college or university, to pursue a career as a developer. He instead looked at trade schools and enrolled in a 24-month training boot camp program.

But he ultimately changed plans at his parents’ urging and dropped out of the boot camp. He applied, and was accepted, into the School of Fine Arts Digital Media and Design Department’s Web/Interactive Media Design program at UConn Stamford.

“My parents insisted – you’re the only child in our family that has one chance to go to college and make something of yourself,” he says. “My other brothers, they finished high school, but didn’t attend any college. My parents wanted me to be the first one, to change the family, in a way. And bringing them here, having them here, I just don’t want them to work as much they did before. I want to provide for them.”

As a sophomore at UConn, he took an advanced web development course where he learned about using APIs – application programming interfaces, a type of protocol for building and integrating app software – and started using them to build his own apps, a process he found he enjoyed.

One of his apps, still a work in progress, uses Spotify API to develop a playlist based on a listener’s emotions – tell the app if you’re feeling happy or angry, and it will build a playlist to compliment your mood.

“I’m trying to improve it by having the camera on, and it will detect your face and, using AI, know what kind of emotions you’re having,” he says, “and with that emotion, create playlists without you having to type it in. You know, sometimes you don’t know what you’re feeling.”

Uddin was part of a small group of students selected for an augmented reality class; the group worked together to create a virtual reality education platform to help student learn about human DNA – it was his first experience building a program in virtual reality.

He is also a member of the inaugural cohort of UConn’s Stamford Startup Studio, a one-year co-op style educational experience offered through the Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where he’s worked with his teammates to build a prototype web application to help make planning weekend activities an easier and better experience for friends and family groups. This semester, he’s been training an AI model as part of the development of the app, called WKNDR.

Uddin and two fellow Startup Studio cohort members are also working to design a computer keyboard that creates electricity while a user types through use of piezoelectric crystals.

“When you press on the keys, the crystals crush and form mechanical energy or electric current,” he says, “which can be stored and then can be used to charge your phone, laptops, anything you want.”

It’s a huge shift for Uddin, who describes himself as an introvert and says he’s never thought of himself as an entrepreneur.

“It’s been such a great experience to watch Reaj grow and really transform throughout the past two semesters,” says Tara Watrous ‘18 (CLAS), the Werth Institute’s Head of Entrepreneurial Transformation and the co-founder and director of the Stamford Startup Studio. “What does life-transformative education look like at Werth? It looks like Reaj! His success story is the reason the Werth Institute works to create authentic life-transformative education experiences. It has been so rewarding to see him flourish.”

Uddin took his recycling startup concept through Traction, a CCEI program designed to help UConn-affiliates build their business model and engage in customer discovery, and he’s currently participating in Accelerate UConn. The concept has pivoted from an in-home product to a solution more broadly aimed at meeting the recycling needs of colleges and universities.

“Coming in, he was not as confident and secure in his abilities, and now he’s going to be interning at a startup in New York City, and he’s working on his own venture,” says Watrous. “He’s pushed himself out of his comfort zone, and I think he’s a great example of what students can achieve when they take the risk and push themselves out their comfort zone.”

For all of his growing success, Uddin hasn’t forgotten his roots – he interviewed for the Stamford Startup Studio while on a visit home to Bangladesh, and he says he hopes to use his entrepreneurial pursuits to contribute to a healthy and sustainable world, particularly for developing countries.

“I want to be a part of a company that contributes to greater change,” he says. “I want to be a part of making the world better than what it is right now.”

He credits the Stamford Startup Studio with helping him develop an entrepreneurial mindset, and for helping him build a network of supportive mentors, advisors, and friends as he sets out on his new ventures.

And though he doesn’t always tell his family members about the projects he’s working on – “they wouldn’t understand what I’m talking about,” he explains – he also credits his family, especially his eldest brother, who he says helped him to have a greater vision for his family and inspired him to think beyond what he thought he might be capable of.

“Back in my home, in Bangladesh, we weren’t as fortunate as we are now. We didn’t live in the most lavish home,” Uddin says. “Part of the American dream includes the opportunity for prosperity and success and making a better version of yourself. My brother managed to thrive towards greater social mobility for our family. He built a new house for us back home and truly motivated me to want to make great achievements. When we went back to Bangladesh to see the house for the first time last year, my parents were in tears. We never imagined that we would have a house like this.”

He continued, “It was very inspirational to see him go through all that. I feel he taught me how to connect with people in a good way and make them make them feel valued. I think that’s the most valuable thing that anyone can do – surround yourself with people you love and take care of them.”

To learn more about entrepreneurial education and opportunities offered through the Werth Institute, visit entrepreneurship.uconn.edu.

For more information about venture support opportunities like Get Seeded, Traction, and Accelerate UConn, visit CCEI.uconn.edu.

 

Original Article via UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2022/03/coding-creating-and-changing-the-world/ 

App Supporting Archival Research Continues Development with Community Partnerships

 

See original story via UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2022/02/app-supporting-archival-research-continue-development-with-community-partnerships/ 

Congratulations to DMD Motion Design & Animation professor Heejoo Kim, whose new film, Behind the Loom, is hitting the international film festival circuit! Behind the Loom is a short experimental animated documentary about the story of women during World War II. It unpacks the mystery of a family tragedy looking through a miniature handmade loom. It is the forgotten story of the brutalization of women and girls leading up to The Siege of Berlin in 1945. This film describes the impact of the war from a female perspective using personal testimonies and letters portraying the previously untold and true story of how Hanni, a mother, and her four daughters coped with the approaching force of the Red Army and the tribulation that ensued. Over 100,000 women and girls were raped during the Siege of Berlin, rarely is this fact acknowledged in history. The heartbreaking letters of Hanni’s husband Albert, provide clues as to why his family died and how he used the power of art to heal himself. Behind the Loom incorporates history, human rights, and feminism in an experimental documentary form.​​

The newly released film has hit the festival circuit and already has great success!

 

AWARDS:

“Best Experimental” – Toronto International Women Film Festival, Toronto, Canada 

“Honorable Mention” – Art Film Awards, Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic

“Best Documentary Short” – Port Blair International Film Festival, Port Blair, India 

“Semi Finalist” – Luleå International Film Festival, Luleå, Sweden 

“Best Film on Women” – Uruvatti International Film Festival, Tamil Nadu, India 

 

ADDITIONAL FESTIVAL SCREENINGS:

Feel The Reel International Film Festival, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Cambodia Independent Film Festival, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Barcelona Indie Filmmakers Festival • BARCIFF, Barcelona, Spain

Rome Outcast Independent Film Award, Rome, Itay

New York Flash Film Festival, NY, USA

 

Learn more about the film at: https://heejoogwenkim.com/behind-the-loom/

Amid waves of applause from game-loving superheroes, ninja turtles, and Jedi, three of UConn’s Digital Media & Design game designers took home awards at this year’s Connecticut Festival of Indie Games (CT FIG). The annual competition unfolded over three days (September 10-12, 2021) in partnership with ConnectiCon, a family-friendly gaming and anime convention that attracts more than 12,000 people to the Hartford Convention Center each year (ConnectiCon XVIII was the first large scale event held at the convention center since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic). 

Students, faculty, and alumni from Digital Media & Design, the Neag School of Education, Greenhouse Studios, and the School of Engineering showcased a dozen games ranging from multiplayer, arcade-style space adventures to virtual reality experiences centered on concepts as varied as plein air painting, geometry, and engineering. During ConnectiCon, attendees had the opportunity to play each game, vote on their favorites, and provide feedback to the developers, each of whom (undergraduates, PhD candidates, and current faculty) is rocketing toward a bright future in the field of design. 

“It is really wonderful to see our students shine. Winning 3 of the 7 digital awards in a state-wide competition is an incredible achievement,” said DMD Department Head, Heather Elliott-Famularo. “We are incredibly proud of the students, alumni, and faculty in our game design program.”

The 2021 CT FIG | UConn DMD student / alumni winners are: 

• Best Narrative – Descent into Madness by Alden Earwood (B.F.A. DMD ‘23)  
• Best Presentation – Through a Glass by Mackenzie Fox (B.F.A. DMD ‘21) 
• Most Engaging – Hare Apparent by Devin Quinn (B.A. DMD ‘21) 

Currently in its eighth year of operation under the leadership of game designer Ken Thompson, the UConn Digital Media & Design game design program is ranked #1 in Connecticut and #19 on the East Coast according to Animation Career Review. It draws from multiple disciplines—including fine arts, psychology, and computer science—to engage students in hands-on projects and cultivate the skills needed to build a wide array of analog, video, and virtual reality gaming experiences. For aspiring Master of Fine Arts students, the program offers fully-funded, three-year MFA graduate assistantships in Digital Media & Design.

“It’s gratifying to showcase their diverse skill sets and hard work to the state of Connecticut. I’ve watched many of them collaborate and learn how to make games, and it’s an honor to have supported them along the way,” said Ken Thompson.

Unique to UConn is the highly-interconnected nature of its DMD game design and educational technology programs. The two coordinate to target practical skills for digital age collaboration, communication, and universal design, all of which are crucial in cutting-edge entertainment, educational, and interactive business spaces. This partnership allows UConn’s game designers to learn technical skills for their profession as well as concepts related to playful learning, human cognition, and accessibility with Dr. Stephen Slota, a DMD/Neag joint faculty appointment. Likewise, educational technology specialists enrolled in the one-year Master of Arts educational technology “Two Summers” program—whose motto is “Learn to Play & Play to Learn”—benefit from interdisciplinary courses that weave together best practices for interactive storytelling, instructional design, and classroom technology implementation.

These learning opportunities are often made possible through funded research positions in game development at Greenhouse Studios, housed in the UConn Homer Babbidge Library. Greenhouse forges diverse and democratic collaborations that build humanities scholarship in new formats to engage new audiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Full List of Competing UConn Student Work:

• Viscid Xenogenics 
  • Meaghan Doherty – Design / Art – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Devin Quinn – Programming – (B.A. DMD ‘21) 

• Descent into Madness 
  • Alden Earwood – Game Design – (B.F.A. DMD ‘23) 

• Through a Glass 
  • Mackenzie Fox – Game Design /Coding / Art – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21) 

• Hare Apparent 
  • Devin Quinn – Game Design – (B.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Mackenzie Fox – Character Art – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Meaghan Doherty – Logo – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21) 

• Enthrall 
  • Danial Ezzati, Game Design and Programming (M.F.A. DMD ‘24) 

• Scrapshoot 
  • Robert Linquist – Lead Project Director / Developer – (B.F.A. DMD ‘19) 
  • Joshua Hirshfield – Lead Producer / Visual Effects – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Ben Guzik – Assistant Director / Lead Designer / Developer /Sound Designer – (B.A. DMD ‘20) 
  • Mackenzie Fox – Lead Visual Artist – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Christopher Janocha – Game Designer / Developer / Sound Designer – (B.F.A. DMD ‘20) 
  • Cadence Hira – Music Composition – (Berkeley School of Music ‘21)
  • Matt Tomaszewski – Project Director / Developer, Game Designer
  • Devin Quinn – Game Developer – (B.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Zack Anderson – Gameplay Programmer – Engineering, (B.S. Comp Sci ‘23)

• Rubicon
  • Devin Quinn – Lead Project Director / Lead Developer – (B.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Josh Hirshfield – Game Designer / Developer – (B.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Matt Hsing – Voice Acting
  • Malcolm Braren – Soundtrack Composer – (B.S. in Marketing ‘21)
  • Sean Mathieu – Marketing / Business – (B.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Cadence Hira – Sound Design & Polish – (Berkeley School of Music ‘21)

• NovaSwarm
  • Patrick Belanger – (M.F.A. DMD ‘18)

• Thesis Topic: Teaching Engineering Concepts with the Arts in Virtual Reality  
  • Arpita Kurdekar (Ph.D. Candidate in Integrative Studies) 

 

Other Faculty Research Presented at ConnectiCon

• Blackhaven – James Coltrain (DMD Game Design Faculty)
  • James Coltrain – Design, Story, 2D and 3D Art, programming, animation, audio, and music
  • Cast
    • Kendra Turner – Darby Farr
    • Maya Turner – Jada “JC” Brazil
    • Anthony Mitchell – Raven Boyd
    • Audio Tour Narrator – James Coltrain
    • Male Caller – James Coltrain
    • Female Caller – RachRob269

• • Script
    • Tia Alphonse
    • Tyra Johnson
    • Naomi Winston
    • Shearon Roberts
    • James Coltrain

• Charles VR – Greenhouse Studios
  • Jonathan Ampiaw – (M.F.A. DMD ‘21)
  • Shawn Chen – (B.F.A. DMD 3D Animation ‘20)
  • Lauren Ciulla – (B.A. DMD Web/Interaction Design ‘20)
  • Ryan Freeland – (M.F.A. DMD ‘18)
  • Eri Lauer – (B.A. DMD 2D Animation ‘20)
  • Tim Miller – (Greenhouse Studios Mellon Design Fellow)
  • Alex Mueller – (B.F.A. DMD Web/ Interaction Design ‘22)
  • Lily Pashapour – (B.A. DMD web/Interaction Design ‘20)
  • Dan Pejril – (DMD 3D Animation Faculty)
  • Eric Rice – (Department Head, Music)
  • Tom Scheinfeldt – (Director, Greenhouse Studios and DMD Faculty)
  • Michael Young – (Humanities Librarian and Adjunct Lecturer in Art History)
  • Brooke Foti Gemmell – (Design Technologist, Greenhouse Studios)
  • Tom Lee – (Design Technologist, Greenhouse Studios, M.F.A. DMD ‘17)

• Courtroom 600  
  • Undergraduate Research Assistants:
    • George Liam Houle – (B.A. DMD Game Design ‘18)
    • Abigail Golec – (B.F.A. Design/Technical Theater)
    • Brett Glynn – (B.A. DMD Game Design ‘19)
    • Alex Williams – (B.S.E. Software Design and Development ‘19)
    • Christopher Janocha- (B.A. DMD Game Design ‘20)
    • Jefferey Dobbs – (B.F.A. DMD 3D Animation ‘20 )
    • Joshua Hirshfield – (B.A. DMD Game Design ‘20)
    • Ethan Hanna – (B.S. Computer Science ‘20 )
    • Justin Woods – (B.F.A. 3D Animation ‘20)
    • Kenny Wei – (B.S. CSE Software Design and Development ‘19)
    • Kerrie Maguire – (B.A. DMD Game Design ‘19)
    • Rae Enzie – (B.F.A. DMD Game Design ‘19)
    • Renoj Varghese – (M.F.A. DMD ‘21 )
    • Benjamin Guzik – (B.A. DMD Game Design ‘20 )
    • Charles Hildner-IV – (B.F.A. DMD Game Design ‘19 )
    • Santino Giannini – (B.A. Communications ‘19)
  • Graduate Research Assistants:
    • William Keeping – (M.A. DMD ‘16)
    • Margaux Ancel – (M.F.A. Arts Administration ‘19)
    • Patrick Belanger – (M.F.A. DMD ‘18)
    • Stefan Lopuszanski – (M.F.A. DMD ‘20)
    • Meghan Arends – (M.A.Public History, UMass Boston ‘22)
  • Faculty
    • Ken Thompson – (DMD Game Design Faculty)
    • Clarissa Ceglio – (DMD Digital Humanities Faculty)
    • Stephen Slota – (DMD Game Design Faculty)
    • Gregory Colati – (UConn Digital Preservation Repository Program Director)
    • Graham Stinnett – (UConn Archivist)

• EOS-503 (A funded research project. All students were compensated for their work)
  • Stephen Slota – (DMD Game Design / Neag Faculty)
  • Colter Moos – (Ph.D. Candidate Neag) 
  • Clare O’Hara – (B.S. Comp Sci ‘21)
  • Devin Quinn – (B.A. DMD ‘21) 
  • Mackenzie Fox- (B.F.A. DMD ‘21)
  • Meaghan Doherty – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21)
  • Josh Hirshfield – (B.F.A. DMD ‘21)  
  • Zack Anderson – (B.S. Computer Science ‘23)