“Educating young people, particularly those who going into the field of journalism and mass communication, is about equipping them not just with skills that will help them in their first jobs but equipping them also with skills that will span a long career that will wind and navigate and change along the way."
After three years of research and development for Professor Garfield’s 21st Century Digital Literacy Project, EMDD Director Dr. Jennifer Palilonis led a presentation in October at the World Conference on E-Learning. The presentation focused on the first round of research results on the usability, user experience, concept design, and content for a new and improved Professor Garfield website. Co-authored with EMDD graduate Tiffany Watt, the paper titled “Professor Garfield’s 21st Century Digital Literacy Project: Supporting K-5 Teachers in the Digital Literacy Instructional Efforts” introduces a novel digital literacy instructional website that leverages the popularity of one of the world’s most well-known and beloved cartoon characters to deliver an age-appropriate, standards-based, cross-curricular digital literacy curriculum.
The Professor Garfield website is scalable, providing opportunities for EMDD students, and ultimately, for teachers across the country to contribute new digital literacy exercises and lessons that can be integrated into this framework. Professor Garfield’s 21st Century Digital Literacy Project is the result of a partnership between the Center for EMDD, the Professor Garfield Foundation and Garfield creator Jim Davis to develop a comprehensive online curriculum that supports K-5 teachers and students in their digital literacy teaching and learning.
In Spring of 2018, the EMDD team completed a beta version of the Professor Garfield website, the latest step toward the ultimate goal for this project: to become a world leader in digital literacy education.
To develop the format and content for the Professor Garfield’s digital literacy curriculum, Dr. Palilonis led a team of EMDD graduate students in an extensive research phase in which students explored preeminent literature on digital literacy pedagogy, state-of-the-art technology in digital literacy instruction, and conducted empathy research with K-5 teachers at Burris Laboratory School and three Chicago Public Schools. They also engaged in a series of collaborative brainstorming sessions with elementary education pre-service teachers at Ball State. Through these sessions, the team identified and designed a number of digital literacy activities for grades K-5 intended to address core digital literacy skills and developed for cross-curricular format.
Research presented at the World Conference on E-Learning represents the first in a series of studies that aim to explore the efficacy of the Professor Garfield approach to digital literacy instruction. Dr. Palilonis is currently leading a research team that includes Burris Laboratory School teacher Stefanie Onieal that explores to what extent the Professor Garfield offerings improve students’ learning related to digital literacy. Dr. Palilonis’ EMDD research team is also exploring grants and other funding opportunities that will allow us to develop a sustainability plan for additional site development and maintenance.
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
My journey to the EMDD program was full of ups and downs, but here’s the short version.
I graduated in May of 2016 with my bachelor’s in sociology from Ball State, with a minor in peace studies and conflict resolution. It wasn’t until graduating that I realized I didn’t want to pursue research, diplomacy, or teaching for my career. After applying to jobs for months, and to the United Nation as a last-ditch effort, I sent in my visa application to live in New Zealand and work on a farm. With my travel plans all squared away, my would-be host canceled on me last minute, and I was left jobless, directionless, and New Zealand-less.
So I decided to go in a different direction. I started looking into graduate school. I looked everywhere from Vancouver, to New York, to Dublin. I didn’t find anything, and the couple of programs I was quasi-interested in were way too expensive. This was now late fall of 2016, and I was tired of feeling stuck. I looked into a few programs through Ball State, but none of them really resonated with me. As I was nearing the end of my internal rope, I was telling a good friend of mine how nothing seemed to be working out and I wasn’t sure what to do next. She told me she had a friend in this new program called Emerging Media Design & Development, and that I should Skype her about it.
After our conversation, I was sold. I had no idea a program like this existed. One that seemed to fit so many of my interests. I applied as soon as I was able to get my materials together.
I will always see 2017 as a year of change for me. I was accepted to EMDD, I got a wonderful graduate assistantship, and I started working at a brewery.
I still say that going back to school was one of the best decisions I will ever make. I love that I get to work with people with different interests, skills, and backgrounds. People who are passionate, tenacious, and empathetic.
And the cherry on top? I feel like I’m actually using my sociology degree. I’m the Research Director for the Water Quality Indiana team project where my principle tasks include similar-case research, demographics, and survey design and distribution. For my creative project, I’m using transmedia storytelling to investigate and understand how breweries deal with inclusivity and empathy with the hopes of creating a space where people can discuss and understand the differences that exist between people.
I’m not quite sure where I’m going next, but I feel more confident than I’ve ever felt.
(Shouts out to Alyssa and Aiste: I would not be in the program if it were not for them.)
Christina Valdez graduated from the EMDD program in May of 2019. She's currently living her best life brewing craft beer in the humble town of Muncie, IN.
“I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for the value of working with a team and in a group setting… the design thinking process doesn’t work in a vacuum.”
Last month, EMDD students participated in our first informal learning event of the semester at SmallBox, a mission-centered design firm in Indianapolis. A small group of us made the trek from Muncie to Broad Ripple to work on-site with designers at SmallBox, an experience that gave students the opportunity to see the real-world application of what they’re learning in design thinking and provided Smallbox with some design research data from an audience of young adults.
After introductions, the SmallBox team introduced us to their current client, a Broad Ripple community organization looking to grow its membership. Because this client was looking to better understand its audience, the SmallBox design team took students through some exercises in design research showing us some ways they approach empathy, the first step in the design thinking process.
For this first step, the prompts were the most important part. The development of the questions was thoughtful and intentional. The questions were broad, yet focused to encourage discussion and produce relevant data. These prompts allowed us, the participants, to give honest answers rather than what we thought the designers wanted to hear. We answered these questions in pairs and wrote our answers on giant sticky notes, allowing our peers to see and comment on our answers as we moved from prompt to prompt and during discussion following the activity. This strategy was also helpful when it came to telling stories, as working one-on-one encouraged conversation with our partner rather than just stating facts. Stories, as we’ve discussed in our EMDD design thinking class, are extremely valuable in empathy research, as it helps designers discover the things a user may not even know she needs.
Our second activity was much more introspective; we were asked to define what spirituality meant to us by creating a collage out of magazine clippings. This technique is a great way to turn an abstract concept into something tangible, as we were able to talk through our rationale with the group after we had completed the collage. Again, the team was careful not to ask us any leading questions—instead, we took the time to talk through our decision-making process individually, which organically led to some interesting connections that may not have been obvious at first glance.
The best part of this event, I think, was the reciprocity. We learned how SmallBox uses some of the same design thinking methods we are studying in class, and the SmallBox team was able to use our input to help with a project.
Fellow first year student, Elijah Yarde, said it was a great way to see how design research and design thinking skills are implemented in a professional space.
“I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for the value of working with a team and in a group setting… the design thinking process doesn’t work in a vacuum.”
Collaboration was key—not just among the designers, but among the participants as well. The rapport we developed created an environment where we could share our thoughts without fear of judgement, which is critical when conducting empathy research. This is a testament to the skills of the SmallBox design team that created a space where we felt comfortable and connected.
A huge thank you again to SmallBox for hosting us!
Rachel Wood earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Murray State University. She loves video games, museums, and narrative theory, so she especially enjoys analyzing the way narrative can become interactive. Between class and work, you can find her drinking coffee, baking scones, and listening to indie folk music.
To end the semester, second-year students in the master’s degree program at the Center for Emerging Media Design & Development had the chance to show off their project work at two showcases, one on-campus and another at Ball State’s Indianapolis Center.
These students worked in teams on four different projects, three of which were continuing efforts from the previous year. The project focus areas varied from education to sports storytelling to entertainment.
Members of the community and project partners were invited to the open house-style events to talk with students and interact with their work, including an augmented reality experience, photo booth and website demos. For on-campus EMDD students the second year is spent entirely on one project, collaborating with fellow students to solve a problem for a real-world client. This year’s clients were the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Professor Garfield Foundation, Circle of Blue and Motor MVB.
The projects provide valuable experience for students to apply their knowledge in design thinking, transmedia storytelling and human-computer interaction, including user experience and user interface design. Working in teams toward a goal also helps develop soft skills and provides an opportunity to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams, an environment that prepares EMDD students for almost any career path.
It’s a great feeling when an email hits your inbox that you’ve been accepted to a conference. The Motor MVB project team was thrilled to receive two such emails for the 2018 Broadcast Education Association Conference, where the team presented a poster and panel discussion.
Since the summer, I’ve led a team of Emerging Media Design & Development graduate students working with Motor MVB–a nonprofit philanthropic effort to increase awareness and participation in boys’ and men’s volleyball–on a communication plan that includes a social media campaign, original journalistic storytelling and an alternate reality game. We are all in our second year of the program and finishing up our final semester with a trip to Las Vegas.
But the conference, and the preparation for it, are about more than just spending a few days in warmer weather (although that will be nice, too.) Our team has learned a lot and grown together throughout the process of considering our project’s importance for learning and scholarship, writing a paper, and communicating our work in a visual poster format.
For the conference, my team organized a panel titled, “Grow Online Engagement with Sports Narratives and Interactive Experiences: ARGS, Social Media, and Original Storytelling.” Panelists (in addition to myself) are
Our team was also accepted into the Research-in-Progress digital poster division. The title of this presentation is “Social Media Storytelling: Building a Brand and Engaging Sports Fans.” This poster will explain how our team used an audience-centered approach to create our social media effort. This poster will also explain the framework we created to engage athletes and the audience in the creation of storytelling content, which uses traditional and nontraditional storytelling methods and platforms.
Not only does presenting at conferences like BEA help promote the Center for EMDD, but it also serves as an opportunity for me and my team to gain knowledge and skills during workshops and sessions as well as connect with other experts working in these disciplines. This experience is definitely something that will be on my resume as I’m looking for a job post-graduation. Building and managing this project has been a really beneficial experience; however, landing not one but two spots at a conference takes that experience to another level, showing that our work is recognized as influential and important by experts in the field.
This post was written by second-year EMDD student Kylie Leonard.
Kylie Leonard is a 2017 graduate of EMDD. She currently works as a course developer for 2U in Washington, D.C.
Remix the Symphony is a transmedia experience that encourages new audience members to engage with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Lilly Classical Series through live events and digital content. It was developed as part of EMDD’s research and creative project labs. As producer, I led my team through a year of ethnographic research, academic research, and user testing to develop an experience that would engage a younger audience new to the ISO and classical music.
In January 2017, Remix the Symphony launched. This semester, we are concentrating on producing content that makes it easy for our audience to personally connect to classical music and to connect classical music to contemporary music they already love. The idea of remixing is threaded throughout everything we do. When we first started developing the project, we knew we wanted to do a Remix Contest, where we would invite musicians to remix music that the ISO is playing in their current season. However, as my team did more user testing, we discovered that everyone wanted a way to connect classical music to their personal style of art, not just musicians. This was the inspiration behind our Remix Nights.
For our Remix Nights, we partnered with two local arts organizations, The Geeky Press and Cat Head Press, to host events where artists of all disciplines could remix classical music in their own style. With the help of a live DJ who played music that will be featured at upcoming ISO concerts, we made a space that felt much closer to a party than anything else. At our first night with The Geeky Press, we invited writers to create flash fiction, poetry, or collages inspired by a playlist of classical music. At our night with Cat Head Press, we concentrated on visual art. The pieces that were created at each Remix Night will be featured in content that we’ll release throughout the month of March, which means that an even wider audience will be able to see how people from the Indy community interpreted classical music.
WFYI produced a piece about our first Remix Night with The Geeky Press. You can listen to it starting at 17:17.
As a part-time EMDD student and a full-time publications designer, my brain is constantly toggling between student mode and work mode. On the positive side, this means that the skills and concepts I have picked up in my classes immediately become a part of my mental toolkit at my job.
I work in an economic research office where every job is deeply connected to data. The research team cares about trends in the data and the implications for households and businesses. As part of the publications team, I care about the best way to tell the visual story of this data.
One project in my office involved designing a website that takes clients step-by-step through an online process to help them understand the strengths of their community and the best direction for future economic growth. The question is: How do we take a complex series of tasks and simplify them for our clients?
The client journey (aka user journey) was developed by a team that included several economic professionals, a website developer, and a publications designer (me). Although we did not follow a formal design thinking process to develop the project, the development process included abstract discussion (brainstorming/ideation), defining, prototyping, testing, and lots and lots of revising.
Over a course of six months, we discussed and listed the critical objectives that we wanted a potential user to complete, the actions that the administrators would have to take to make those objectives possible, and the actions that could be added if users were unable to complete the objectives. We also estimated reasonable time frames for each step and action in the journey.
To document these hypothetical user journeys, we drew basic and then increasingly more detailed flowcharts, which can be thought of as user journey maps. The details and phrasing of the maps changed as we refined/clarified the process and developed new features. The map also changed in intensity of detail depending on the audience to whom we were presenting (a basic overview for promotional partners, more detail for potential users, and far more detail for coworkers behind the scenes).
The project team also had to establish uniform terminology for our project: Each “step” in this project involves several tasks for both the user and the administrators. A “client community” is self-defined by the user, so it may be a town, a multi-town region, an entire county, or a multi-county region. All project assets (brochures, website, presentations, etc) and project team members need to use this terminology. We also must have consensus for which tasks fall under which step, which conditions must be met for a user community to be eligible for the next step, and when exactly a user community is promoted to the next step.
To keep this project scalable and cost-efficient, we rely heavily on website automation to guide users and administrators through each step (we’re looking at a pool of 600 communities eligible for participation within a 10-year window, and we estimate 0.5-2 years for process participation). This very complex website is being developed in phases, with the first phase completed for a soft launch in early 2016, two years after the initial conversations and planning began. After meeting with the very first pilot community to explain the steps and how they work online, it became obvious to me that we needed a user guide.
The website is full of contextual prompts, but many of our potential clients do not fall in the “tech-savvy” category, and therefore are very intimidated by a process that is so heavily web-based. I think of this audience as “nervous web users”—those who may successfully email and web surf, but panic when an ad pops up or a video auto-plays. The nervous web user needs some hand-holding when they do something new online.
When building the user guide, I went back to the user map and separated each main step into a chapter. Each main task became a heading appearing chronologically, and every task has a corresponding screenshot with added arrows, circles, and dummy information so users know exactly where everything is on the site, what it does, and when to use it.
Creating a dummy account was doubly useful. Not only did it serve as an effective example of what sort of information goes where in the site, but it also forced me to perform a cognitive walkthrough of all the features of the site and highlight the tasks that might go wrong. What happens if I mistype an email address? What happens if someone forwards the questionnaire invitation to another address? What if the community account needs to be switched to another user and how do they pick up where the other left off?
Because the website is implementing new features in phases, the user guide is not a static document. The most current “official” version is updated online, and the team must be notified when significantly new versions are made available. Each version of the user guide has the publishing date marked clearly on the front, features a “who to contact” page with all the administrators and partners associated with the project, and references the online download link in multiple places. If users suspect they have an outdated version, they can easily download a fresh copy.
This project is constantly improving and expanding, so it’s important to think about what we’re producing from an angle of sustainability. This is a long-term project, so we must be vigilant in establishing a maintenance routine to ensure that features continue to function and documentation reflects that function even five and ten years down the road.
Victoria is a 2017 graduate of EMDD. She currently lives in Muncie working at Ball State as the manager of Publications and Web Services for the Center for Business and Economic Research.
"I think this is where the heart of academic inquiry really lies: questions that pull at your curiosity and inspire your passions"
As far as origin stories go, mine is traceable to one specific moment.
During my time as an undergrad, I had very little experience with digital media. I never played video games. I pushed against what I thought was the “smartphone fad” for awhile. I didn’t even have a Netflix account. I read hardcopy books. I rented documentary DVDs from the university library. I listened to illegally downloaded music on my refurbished Zune MP3 player. If you listen closely, you can hear the stereotype of the millennial digital native shattering.
I wasn’t trying to be a hipster. I had just never been immersed in the digital world until I forced myself to be. I enrolled in the digital media minor offered at my university. The very first day of classes, my professor showed the class something I will never forget: the interactive documentary Bear 71. This digital story about the life of a grizzly in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was fiction and nonfiction at the same time. It was a documentary, but something more. I had never felt more immersed in a story before.
Bear 71 sparked my interest in digital stories and led me to the EMDD program today. When I began brainstorming possible topics for my thesis during my first year, I always came back to Bear 71. Why had it intrigued me? What was it about the digital setting of the story that had gripped me more than traditional documentaries? I think this is where the heart of academic inquiry really lies: questions that pull at your curiosity and inspire your passions.
I have to remind myself of this fact whenever I get in deep with research jargon and contrasting opinions while writing my thesis. The working title for my thesis is currently, “Interactivity as a meaning making tool in interactive documentaries: a user experience study of Bear 71.” It even makes me roll my eyes, so I can only imagine the reaction of someone who doesn’t eat, sleep, and breath this stuff every day. I have to keep asking myself, “Why would anyone care about what I have to write?”
But then I think back on Bear 71, and how much I cried at the end of the bear’s story. I look back at how ubiquitous digital worlds have become in our culture in the last decade. Words like “interactive” and “meaningful” have become so overused that designers and audiences alike lose perspective of what these terms mean and why they matter. The technicalities of academic writing can undermine passion and muddle the potential applications of such in-depth topics. But even a tiny peek outside of the academic bubble can be an integral part of the research process.
It’s easy to observe the ways and tools people use to engage with new information. That’s interactivity. It’s easy to see how people change their opinions, values, and understandings based on the information they perceive. That’s meaning-making. And it’s easy to see how the things we as creators make affect how people interact and make meaning out of the information we present.
That’s user experience.
What isn’t always easy is remembering why the things we study as academics, researchers, and creators matter. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of reflection on how we came to ask these questions in the first place.
Jessica Pettengill is a 2017 graduate of EMDD. She is currently a writer and digital media producer in Pasdena, CA.
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