Collaborations
Collaborations are the heart of the Electronic Literatures and Literacies Lab, and cut across academic disciplines and media silos. Our mission is to create a community space where creative artists can collaborate with social scientists, and humanists with engineers.
What we have in common
We are writers, artists, game designers, linguists, educators, engineers, social scientists, roboticists, and others (both inside and outside the university) who share a fascination with the entangled relationships between culture and technology.
What, for example, does literacy mean in a digital age? What happens in the space where computation meets narrative? Where ontological thinking meets metaphorical thinking? Where algorithms gain empathy?
What we're working on
Many of our projects and interests involve creating digital worlds for both pedagogical exploration and academic study -- supporting computational thinking in K-12 education -- investigating language learning in virtual worlds -- fostering conversations about the ethical implications of technological innovations -- promoting digital inclusion -- exploring artificial intelligence -- analyzing the emerging power of social media to shape political landscapes -- and discovering how technology can augment human capacities in unimagined ways.
If you'd like to join the EL3 community, drop an email to Judith Pintar: jpintar@illinois.edu
CROSS-CAMPUS INITIATIVE
Playful by Design is a community network that includes faculty, staff, students, and members of the University of Illinois and the greater Champaign-Urbana community who study and design games, understood as interactive narratives, new media, art works, platforms, websites, exhibits, virtual worlds and digital learning environments, those who research and develop emerging technologies (AR/VR/AI...), and who study and develop playful/gameful pedagogies.
Sponsored in academic years 2017-2018 and 1018-2019 by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), now the Humanities Research Institute (HRI), the Playful by Design: Gaming Pedagogies, Digital Literacies and the Public Humanities Research Cluster, facilitated the growth of an interdisciplinary community of practice organized around the emergent capacities of play and the design of playful pedagogical spaces, both virtual and real. Through a series of participatory workshops and events we shared our research, experiences, and skills during monthly gatherings, leading to the first spring Playful by Design Spring Symposium in April 2018.
In the second year of IPRH sponsorship, Playful by Design supported the creation of game studies and design courses investigated possibilities for creating game studies degree programs. The Playful by Design Spring Symposium in April 2019 added a third track to its programming and drew a larger slate of presenters and audience members than the first year.
The academic year 2019-2020 began with the exciting news that we had been awarded an Investment for Growth grant from the Provost's office at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Our initiative, Games @ Illinois: Playful Design for Transformative Education to support the growing number of projects and programs across campus that are seeking to work at the dynamic intersection of play, immersive technologies and interactive design.
The planned Spring Symposium in 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID quarantine; however, the event was held virtually in the fall. That year, interdisciplinary curriculum committees were formed towards the creation of Graduate and Undergraduate Game Studies Minor degree programs, to be administered by Informatics.
The 2021 Playful by Design Symposium was held in Siebel Center for Design, in coordination with the CU Community Fablab, and the CU organization, CUDO Plays. During this event it was announced that the Undergraduate Game Studies Minor had received approval of the faculty senate.
2020 Symposium Schedule (archive)
2019 Symposium Schedule (archived)
2018 Symposium Schedule (archived)
For more information contact:
Judith Pintar
Games Studies & Design
School of Information Sciences
jpintar@illinois.edu
INTERACTIVE FICTION
Interactive Fiction (IF) at UIUC
A creative approach to fostering programming literacy through the humanities.
Interactive Fiction (IF) is one expression of the broader genre of interactive digital narrative (IDN) that includes digital poetry, hypertext fiction, and other forms of emerging text-based and multi-modal Electronic Literature. The authoring and academic study of IF as both a literary and game genre, is supported by courses that teach Inform 7, a unique programming language and design system and Twine, an innovative and open-source tool for interactive, nonlinear storytelling.
The Quad Game
The Quad Game is an open-ended, ongoing work of IF that uses as its game world the UIUC campus, beginning at the center of the Quad. The game is collaboratively authored by students enrolled the Games Studies & Design course GSD 409: Design & Programming of Narrative Games & Simulations, and cumulatively expands every semester that the course is offered.individual works
Students enrolled in INFO 490 also author their own individual works of IF, which provides a steady stream of innovative narrative works of IF to the EL3 library. Other students and faculty as well as members of the Champaign-Urbana community are invited to submit works for inclusion in our UIUC/CU IF collection.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES
The Illinois Map
A collaborative programming sandbox that endlessly expands in virtual space and time.
Research. Write. Code. Play.
Understanding
The Illinois Map is a digital learning environment, envisioned as both a classroom resource (an educational game), and a pedagogical tool (a coding workshop). It is designed to foster programming literacy while promoting intercultural/ interracial empathy through play.
Living history
When fully implemented, the Illinois Map website will invite faculty, students, K-12 teachers and children across the state to "translate" Illinois histories, including minority and other non-mainstream perspectives, into linked interactive scenes, and to contribute to the development of AI-programmed NPCs who wander through the Map.
Natural language programming
Both scenes and characters are being developed using Inform 7, a "natural language" design system and programming language with a gentle learning curve that makes it both powerful and accessible.
For everyone
Those not interested in writing code may do research and/or contribute narrative prose; those not interested in writing may program; everyone else may enter the Map as players, immersing themselves in history.
READING & RESEARCH GROUP
Computers and Language Learning
A cross-disciplinary initiative addressing the use of computers in second language acquisition.
Originally sponsored by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), this group is interested in language learning and instruction through digital platforms and virtual environments.
Investigating technological innovations that affect the way we teach and learn languages, we explore the use of multi-player platforms, like Second Liee, as well as interactive fiction as a promising new medium for enhancing learning and developing language proficiency. This group is also a great place to get feedback on ongoing or future research projects.
To join this group contact:
Randall Sadler
Linguistics/English as a Second Language
grsadler@illinois.edu