Transmedia Making

Want to learn more about my dissertation? Here is my thesis and defense presentation! The main theme is 'Transmedia Making' or using educational media as inspiration for children's maker activities. The study involved the design of Playdough to Plat,  a 5-day summer camp that served as an immersive transmedia learning experience for children ages 6-9 (n=45). The goal of the study was to advance theory and design of informal learning environments that utilize educational media as a “low-floor, high-ceiling” (Papert,1980) prelude to hands-on, project-based learning.

Winner of the 2019 Immersive Learning Award (Graduate Student) awarded by Emerging Learning Technology (AECT) 

Read the full dissertation >> 

'Across and Beyond the Screens: Investigating Children's Joint Engagement with Educational Media and Related Activities'. This case study investigated children’s learning experiences in a media-inspired summer camp. The purpose of the study was to explore how educational media can be used to extend children’s learning experiences across the screens (television, mobile, tablet) and beyond these screens through hands-on maker activities, with a focus on their engagement.

The dissertation is roughly 150 pages, and also contains summary of the maker activities I designed for this study. 

In this (roughly 20 min) video, I will walk you through the key findings of my research.  Analysis of data suggests that viewing media and doing maker activities in groups allowed opportunities for joint engagement among children and facilitators. Semi-structured maker activities yielded higher engagement for children compared to structured activities. Limited references to media were observed in children’s conversations during the maker activities, leading to lack of clarity about the role consonance of media and making played in the overall engagement for children. Future research on joint engagement should consider adding prompts during the maker activities that directly reference the media to generate more contextual conversations among children and facilitators.