Projects

My current research interests and projects cover a wide variety of areas.

Cultural Heritage Informatics

While there are more convoluted and confusing definitions, the simplest (and certainly most inclusive) definition of Informatics is the creative application of computing and information technologies (in all of their myriad forms) in a specific field. Frankly, I like the explanation offered by the School of Informatics at Indiana University. By that definition, you get a myriad of informatics subdisciplines such as bioinformatics, social informatics, health informatics, and musical informatics.

A great deal of the research and projects that I do fall under the (rather broad umbrella) of cultural heritage informatics. Cultural heritage is a broad term used to refer to the kinds of things that historians, archaeologists, and socio-cultural anthropologists study – tangible (material) and intangible aspects of culture that is often (though not always) explored through the lens of time. So, by the above stated definition, cultural heritage informatics is the creative application of computing and information technologies within the context of cultural heritage for the purposes of public education, scholarly research, outreach, dissemination of scholarly data and information, and scholarly peer to peer communication. My current cultural heritage informatics projects include the following:

iAKS – Interactive Archaeological Knowledge Management System

http://iaks.matrix.msu.edu/

iAKS is a web and client based application that helps archaeologists collect, archive and analyze data faster and easier. It’s portable, cross platform and completely customizable to the needs of individual users and projects. iAKS data is stored in an open, XML format which can be shared and accessed across networks for comparison and further analysis from other researchers. iAKS is comprised of both a client (desktop) application and a web based application (accessed in a browser). Each can run independently of the other and are really two completely different applications. The client application is built on the Adobe AIR platform and is used primarily for collecting and visualizing data. The web-based application allows clients to connect their applications to a central server for sharing and archiving data. Multiple projects can then be accessed together for cross-project data comparison.

The Interactive Archive

The Interactive Archive is an Adobe Flex based Rich Internet Application designed to display content from a KORA digital repository. The Interactive Archive supports all types of media, including photographic imagery, audio, documents, and video, and allows users to create, annotate, contextualize, and share custom collections. In order to facilitate the use of video in custom collections, The Interactive Archive features a simple tool to segment and frame video. In addition to being accessible on the web through a regular browser, a cross-platform (Mac/PC/Linux) desktop version of The Interactive Archive based on the Adobe AIR platform will be available to users. This desktop version will be particularly useful in cases where user’s do not have stable internet connectivity.

The purpose of The Interactive Archive is twofold. First, it will serve as a feature rich, unified environment to deliver the wealth of African and African American related video, audio, and archival material that MATRIX: The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online has accumulated over numerous years through the development of various standalone projects such as Overcoming Apartheid, the African Online Digital Library, Rights to Resistance, The African Activist Archive, and Diversity & Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa. In this regard, The Interactive Archive will also serve to further reinforce Matrix’s commitment to the creative and meaningful delivery of African and African american related media. Second, it will be released as content agnostic open source software under the GPLv2 license so that museums, libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions can deliver their digital collections in a meaningful, creative, and usable manner.

Development of Interactive Archive is supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.  A prototype version of Interactive Archive can be found at http://flash.matrix.msu.edu/Interactive_Archive/

Serious Games for Cultural Heritage Learning

Serious games are digital games whose primary purpose is not entertainment. These could include games for training, games for learning, games for persuasion, and games for advertisement. While serious games have been used in a wide variety of contexts such as healthcare, the military, and language training, there are comparatively few instances of games being used to teach history, cultural heritage, archaeology, or complex social change over time. My serious games for cultural heritage learning projects include the following:

Red Land/Black Land: Teaching Ancient Egyptian History Through Game Based Learning

Red Land/Black Land project is a robust Civilization IV mod allowing players to explore the socio-cultural and historic character of Ancient Egypt. The intention of this mod is threefold. First, and most importantly, the game will provide players with an opportunity to explore the process of social and historical change from the early Predynastic period (ca. 4000 B.C.) until the end of the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 525 B.C.). Secondly, the mod will include supplementary game content that explores the construction of historical knowledge – addressing questions of how historians and archaeologists know what they do about ancient Egypt. Thirdly, the mod will provide an ethical and accurate counterpoint to the wealth of existing mainstream commercial videogames that draw upon pseudo-historical and pseudo-archaeological notions of ancient Egypt in order to craft an experience that is presented as historically accurate manner. Ultimately, this game-based learning approach provides a far deeper and more experiential understanding of the subject material than might be gained through other, more traditional means such as textbooks and classroom lectures. Given its nature, the project is eminently suited to take socio-cultural, historical, and epistemological concepts that are normally ensconced in the academy, and transmit it in a easily approachable fashion to a wide variety of audiences high school students, university students, and the broader public.

John Snow: Epidemic

On August 31st, 1854, cholera struck the Soho district of London.  While there had previously been outbreaks in London, none were on the scale of that in Soho.  In the three days following the outbreak, 127 people had died.  During the next week, more than three quarters of the population had fled the area.  By the end of the outbreak, 616 people had died, and the mortality rate in some areas was more than 12 percent.   The dominant medical thinking of the day pointed to miasma – a noxious form of “bad air” – as the culprit for the Soho cholera outbreak.  Contrary to this, Dr. John Snow, a prominent London Physician, believed that the the cause of the outbreaks lay elsewhere.

Through meticulous field research & scientific observation, brilliant deductive reasoning, and an entirely new outlook on disease transmission, Dr. Snow was able to conclude that the 1854 cholera outbreak was not the result of miasma, but the result of contaminated water deriving from one specific pump on Broad Street in the Soho district.  Snow later used a spot map to conclusively illustrate how the Soho cases of cholera were centered around the Broad Street pump. Snow also pioneered the use of medical statistics in order to show the connection between the water source quality and the recorded cases of cholera.

Because of his actions, Dr. Snow is widely recognized as one of the most important figure in the history of epidemiology.  The outcome of Snow’s seminal work not only impacted the theory and practice of public health, but represents one of the most noteworthy events in the history of scientific and medical inquiry.  As such, Snow’s work is highly significant for students studying the history and philosophy of science, medical history, urban studies, public health, and medical anthropology.

John Snow: Epidemic, a Flash-based online adventure game encouraging a deep understanding of the history and philosophy of medicine and science  within the historic context of the 1854 Soho cholera outbreak.  While the primary audience for John Snow: Epidemic will be students studying topics such as the history & philosophy of science, history of medicine, public health, urban studies, and medical anthropology, the game will also be open and accessible the interested members of the general public.

Audrey’s Garden

My only recent non-cultural heritage related serious game, Audrey’s Garden is a series of story-based interactive online Flash mini-games designed to teach standards-based natural science concepts to middle school students within the context of environmental stewardship, responsibility, and sustainability.   Audrey’s Garden is designed specifically to be interoperable with the WISE (Web Based Inquiry Science Environment). Phase I of Audrey’s Garden can be accessed at http://flash.matrix.msu.edu/Audreys_Garden/

Open Courseware

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses (usually at the university level).

(from the OCW Consortium site) There are many practical benefits for the provider/publisher of an OpenCourseWare, including:

• Institution – Advances the institutional mission, stimulates innovation, and generates alumni and community pride.
• Academic departments – Showcases departments’ offerings, enhances faculty and student recruitment, accelerates adoption of digital materials in teaching, and fosters collaboration among faculty.
• Faculty – Provides a new vehicle for contributing to faculty members’ discipline, affords greater visibility for themselves and their work, provides a valuable service to faculty for enhancing the presentation of course materials, provides an information resource and embraces faculty values.
• Students – Helps plan their courses of study and provides supplementary study materials.

My OpenCourseWare projects include the following:

Oryoki

http://oryoki.org/

Oryoki (oh—roe—key) is an online (and open source) publishing and syndication system designed for the deployment of open courseware material developed by my former grad student Jeff Siarto on which I am a consultant. Built with Ruby on Rails, Oryoki is designed specifically to allow individuals, departments, and institutions to easily deploy open courseware materials with little or no technical infrastructure. Think of Oryoki as the WordPress for open courseware.

Blogging in Higher Education

I am committed to exploring how blogs (long form, micro-blogs, etc.) can be used meaningfully in higher education – either for assignments, student/professor communication, or classroom community building. My Blogging in Higher Education projects include the following:

Blogs for Learning

http://blogsforlearning.msu.edu

Blogs for Learning was originally conceived as a robust online resource designed for students and instructors who are interested in the theory and practice of blogging within an educational setting. The goal of Blogs for Learning is to provide information and resources as to the technical, legal, and pedagogical aspects of blogging in the classroom. The design of the Blogs for Learning site was carefully conceived to be elegant, highly standards compliant and very forward thinking.

Immersive & Transmedia Storywords

In many of today’s popular entertainment franchises (especially speculative fiction & fantasy), stories and characters unfold across multiple media channels and products. As Jenkins (2006) notes, the strength of transmedia storytelling lies in the fact that multiple texts are integrated into an overall narrative so large that it cannot be contained within a single medium. In its ideal form, a transmedia story speaks to the strengths of each individual media platform. A story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through digital game play. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa. However, there also needs to be a strong narrative connection between the separate manifestations of the story in the separate media platforms. Ultimately, the best kind of transmedia storytelling isn’ t about telling the same story over and over again, it’s about telling different parts of the same story in different media in order to create a meta-story that transcends any one specific delivery platform.

The Ethnography of Tabletop Miniature Storyworlds

The inevitable question that must be asked in the context of transmedia storytelling is whether story products (video games, novels, movies, comics, etc.) that exist within a rich and compelling storyworld provide greater enjoyment for the audience than story products that do not. Is the creation of a storyworld (a process that both time consuming to create and to manage) a wise investment for storytellers (game designers, novelists, comic writers, etc.)? It is within the context of this question that this study was designed to explore the interaction (or lack thereof) that a player/reader/user has with the meta-storyworld in which the storytelling media that they are consuming is embedded.

Over the course of the research, I engaged in an ethnographic study of HeroClix players, a tabletop miniature role playing game. The game itself, which is published by WizKids Games, draws its gameplay mechanic, characters/miniatures, and gameplay scenarios primarily from the Marvel and DC comic book universes. As such, it provides an excellent opportunity to explore the impact (if any) that a rich and compelling storyworld, a hallmark of comic books (especially those highlighted in the HeroClix game itself), has on a player’s entertainment experience.

Non-digital Game Studies

Non-digital games (tabletop games, board games, CCGs, tabletop miniature games, etc) have been an entertainment and education medium for centuries. Without the distraction of high-end graphics, new user interfaces and 3D audio, modern non-digital games tend to rely on solid game mechanics, storytelling, and the players’ imaginations. In addition, most (if not all) non-digital games create a powerful social experience for players. As such, they are a worthy subject of study. My non-digitial game study project and research include the following:

The Digital Tabletop

http://www.thedigitaltabletop.org

The purpose of this blog is to serve as an extension to the Board Game Studies Working Group, a collaborative project being undertaken by faculty and students at Georgia Institute of Technology and Michigan State University. The blog is intended to serve as a venue for discussing the game mechanics used in designer board games, their relationship or possible influence on digital games, and a meta-level discussion about how this discussion could be improved.

Serious Boardgames

Serious games (of the digital variety) have become a mainstay in the academic community. Their uses as tools for education, training, persuasion, and creativity have been shown in a wide variety of studies. Unfortunately this discussion has not been extended to include non-digital games such as tabletop games, boardgames, tabletop miniature games, and collectible card games. I feel very strongly that this is a missed opportunity. It is within this context that I am committed to exploring whether the model for the development and study of digital games can be applied to non-digital games.