Home Bound

2020 has thrown us quiet the curveball. Barnard closed it's doors on March 17th for the pandemic, COVID-19. My plans to work with the HTC Vive equipment have been put on the back-burner until this summer. The DHC will allow me to continue my project over the summer, if the administration is permitted to return to campus.

Therefore, I have had to alter my plans for April and May. I am continuing with my liberal arts digital humanities project database. I've researched 60 schools (so far), and have analyzed 35 decent research projects. The DHC needs this information for consultations with faculty to help them visualize future projects. Also, we are exploring new collaborations and funding opportunities/limitations.

Working at home is testing my abilities to focus and maintain a normal schedule. However, in a moment of panic, I realized that I was just doing too much with little focus in the past few months. With this new realization, I sat down to list all of the things I am doing everyday and compared it against what I need to be doing to further my career. I was spending way too much time trying to learn Blender and Unity! It's important to know how to use these programs, but I have no intention of being a developer - I want to design EdTech for Higher Ed, but will leave the development to graphic artists.

So what does my new plan look like? I am researching the best practices for developing digital humanities courses with a semester-long technology project. Questions that need to be addressed: How will students create a VR project within 14-16 weeks? How does one seamlessly integrate archival material into such a project? What are the benefits and constraints of using VR in higher ed?

Stay tuned for next month's update!