Topics: College of Sciences and Humanities, Immersive Learning
March 8, 2007
<b>Dan Reagan</b>
The
Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry recently selected three faculty fellows to teach immersive, interdisciplinary, collaborative, project-driven and community-based seminars for 2007-08.
The fellows, and their semester-long seminars, are:
- "The Expectation of Excellence: Girls, Sports and Community," Kecia McBride, associate professor of English (fall semester)
- "Cybercommunities, Cyberselves and Constructed Realities," Melinda Messineo, associate professor of sociology (spring semester)
- "An Experiment in Deliberative Democracy: Hoosiers Debate Health Care," Dan Reagan, associate professor of political science (spring semester)
McBride and her students will study the impact of the Title IX Amendment to the Higher Education Act, prohibiting gender discrimination in athletics, and the work ethic and leadership skills of young girls.
The students will partner with Burris Laboratory School and the Indiana High School Athletic Association to produce a documentary. It will focus on the lives of student athletes who play for Steve Shondell's nationally renowned Burris Lady Owls volleyball team. In addition, the film will feature Birch Bayh, sponsor of the Title IX Amendment, and Pat Summitt, coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Volunteer basketball team.
Messineo and her students will research and produce a mixed-world play that will investigate how virtual identities and communities compare with reality.
They will partner with the Muncie Civic Theater to create a play and graphic novel that explores how identities are presented and compare how online and real-life relationships are maintained.
Reagan and his students will survey Muncie citizens to gauge their opinions about health care. They will use the results to create a deliberative assembly that will be filmed for broadcast on public television. Afterward, they will survey the participants again to measure the impact of the debate and deliberation on public opinion.
The students will partner with WIPB-TV and By the People of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions to film the assembly, which will feature a wide range of experts on health care.
The Virginia Ball Center, founded in 1999, explores the connections among the arts, humanities, sciences and technology; creates products to illustrate each project's collaborative research and interdisciplinary study; and has each team present its product to the community.
By Jody Kress