Projects are Blooming at the EMC

by Gillianne Ross ’22

With the remainder of the Spring semester in front of us, the Emergent Media Center (EMC) wants to give an overview regarding our latest projects and an update for those continuing from past semesters. Roughly a year into remote work, the EMC team has adapted and redefined our community structure to enable us to actively collaborate and work within a virtual format. We have eight teams working at the EMC this semester. The following are highlights from a few of them. 

The Making It Better Agents, or M.I.B. Agents team is focusing on creating a video campaign suite for this organization that focuses on helping children and families in active treatment for osteosarcoma (bone cancer, typically pediatric). Already, this project has created a way for these children to connect with each other online. The team is enthused about working with this organization and helping them further their reach.

The UVM Opioid team is working with UVM’s Larner College of Medicine to create a gamified online training for medical residents to learn better and safer opioid prescription practices. The team designed a prototype in the Articulate course management software system in the Fall semester, and are eager to iterate and test with medical focus groups. This training module will help enhance medical residents’ comfort level and understanding about the implications of opioid prescribing on patients and alternative routes that can be taken to minimize prescription abuse risk. This semester the team is iterating on the prototype designed last semester and implementing client-provided patient case study data into the prescription loop within the learning module. Plans include focus group testing with our target audience of UVM medical residents.

The Well-being team has returned this semester in partnership with OVR Technology, local tech entrepreneurs, to develop and test a prototype aimed at supporting college students’ well-being through an olfactory virtual reality experience. This project has multiple components and ties in the connection between smell and neural response. The team is working towards an end prototype that would allow students to have a VR experience centered on the olfactory system while exploring a virtual setting and hopefully improving their well-being.

Project E.G.G. (Environmental Generation Guardian) is continuing to make progress on their goal of creating a 3D game experience aimed at emphasizing the impact of humans on the environment over generations. The game explores how specific actions such as deforestation affect the ecological system. In the Fall semester, the team was successful in testing the game experience with two separate high school focus groups. The feedback from those sessions has informed the priorities for this semester to ensure networked player world saving, improved variety in the world art textures, updated UI (user interface) and additional features (like planting flowers and a garden) that positively affect world health. A website for the game is available for testing. Updated versions will be uploaded to the site when available. You are welcome to visit the site and explore what the team has created: https://emergentmediacenter.com/projecteggtest/.

Carbon Neutrality Reality came out of the Spring 2020 EMC Fellowship with Associate Professor Valerie Esposito. The goal of this project is to explore how to achieve carbon neutrality at Champlain College by 2030. The team has continued to collaborate with Professor Esposito by joining one of her classes. EMC students are working with the class to achieve specific goals set by the initial fellowship project and based on the results of a survey sent to all of Champlain College. To get more information about the initiative check out this video.

To keep up to date with all EMC activities and projects be sure to read our blog for progress updates and follow us on Instagram and Vimeo for more content and profiles of staff and student workers.