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Augmented Reality Games, Movies, and InfoSec: Summer 2018 Interns

August 23, 2018 Beth Seltzer
 LITS’s Educational Technology Services interns

Each summer, we sponsor several interns to work closely with LITS’s Educational Technology Services. These internships were originally designed to help us develop faculty and staff digital pedagogy projects. Over recent years, we've added the additional goal of helping students develop and practice articulating their Digital Competencies: the digital skills and critical perspectives on technology and data that are crucial to 21st-century success.

Our interns receive hands-on digital competencies training over their ten-week internship, taking workshops in topics like articulating their digital skills on resumes and job interviews, as well as in competency-specific topics such as Project management and Design thinking.

The students are also an invaluable resource for us in building the Digital Competencies Program. They create our materials, give us feedback on new programming, and help us shape the meaning and message of the program in ways that will resonate with students across the college.

Our internships follow the needs of faculty and staff, so they're slightly different each year. (Last year, we lead internships in Digital Curriculum and AR/VR—read more about the experiences of those interns here). This year, we organized internships in Digital Curriculum Development, Audiovisual Production, and Information Security. Students worked with "clients" from across the college--faculty and staff developing digital projects, often through the Digital Bryn Mawr Seed Grants. (More detail about their projects is below.)

By the end of the summer, several students cited an increase in confidence in articulating their digital competencies. Megan Pemberton ('20, Audiovisual) commented that she would find the experience helpful for being able to say concretely, "this is what I did and this is what it means." Eunsoo Jang ('20, Digital Curriculum) commented that she would be able to keep the competencies in the back of her head as she was gaining skills throughout college, so that "later on if I do gain these skills, I would know what to say and how to express that." Romy Dangol ('19, Digital Curriculum) notes that "I definitely feel more confident... especially since I now have the vocabulary to express what I learned over the past weeks." Leslie Goloh ('19, Information Security) notes that confidence, as well as skill, is an important factor in finding a first position: "If you're confident of your skills, people will be confident in your confidence of your skills," Goloh says.

The students' newfound confidence comes from a solid foundation. For each of the 10 weeks students worked with us, we asked them to report back on which competencies they developed over that week. The results show the wide range of areas the students were able to develop over the course of the summer:

Project management (27 reports), Design thinking (26 reports), and Audiovisual analysis and production (23 reports) were the clear front-runners, with multiple students reporting developing these skills most weeks. Compared to our 2017 interns, Design thinking and Audiovisual analysis are both higher, reflecting the greater percentage of audiovisual projects this year and our students' embrace of design thinking as a conceptual framework for managing their work. Students used quick prototypes and an iterative design process, which could be adapted to the different needs of their "clients" across Bryn Mawr.

Digital Curriculum

Digital Curriculum Interns: Romy Dangol (2019), Eunsoo Jang (2020)

The Digital Curriculum internships support teaching and learning; students worked closely with faculty and staff on several of the Digital Bryn Mawr Seed Grant projects. One favorite project of the pair was work on LITS's new Augmented Reality Library Scavenger Hunt, a mobile hunt through the libraries to help students learn about the collections and services. Students used the open-source ARIS editor to develop the games, a program Dangol notes was "kind of challenging at first, but it was a welcome challenge." Jang agrees that it was "kind of intimidating, but was something new, and I always like learning something new."

Another favorite project of the Digital Curriculum interns was work on new online Digital Competencies interactive videos, providing training and opportunity for reflection for students even if they're unable to make our physical workshops. (Click "log in as guest" to view the resources without a Bryn Mawr account--no need to create an account.) The videos required the interns to experiment with a range of tools, including H5P and Adobe Premier. "Learning this new software was very exciting, because now I can say at least I have exposure to that professional video editing tool," says Dangol. Both students note that faculty might be interested in making their own interactive videos through Moodle and H5P. Faculty interested in learning more about this technology can always stop Educational Technology Service's Office Hours, which will be held 3:30-5pm on Mondays during the Fall 2018 semester.

Audiovisual Production

Audiovisual Production Interns: Kim Davis (2020), Megan Pemberton (2020)

The AV Production interns worked on a range of projects over the course of the semester for different client. Working with clients created a different environment than filmmakers usually encounter in school. "The stakes were higher in a lot of senses," notes Pemberton, reflecting on the difference between making movies independently and working with clients.

One favored project of these students was a collaboration with the Information Security interns on a new promotional video for information security, which gave the students a chance to work with a fictional script and student actors--look for it in October as part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

Information Security

Information Security Interns: Leslie Goloh (2019), Julie Gonzales (2019)

These new “InfoSec” internships responded to a few separate needs on campus. Professor Sofia Fenner’s received a Digital Bryn Mawr Seed Grant to help train faculty, staff, and students employ data security practices such as encryption to safeguard their research data. Last semester, Goloh took Cryptographic Functions Computer Science class, and commented that it was "interesting to actually see encryption in action from the front end." As a CS major, working on this project helped her gain a more complete sense of encryption, both in terms of the programming behind it and the ways it can be best shared and spread as a best practice in dealing with research data.

LITS managers also wanted to help build on the momentum as Bryn Mawr continues to tighten its security overall, both through technical updates as well as outreach and education to the community. To further promote best practices, students collaborated with the Audiovisual interns to create a new video inspired by characters from a popular new superhero movie. Keep an eye out for the video in the fall.