News/Research

BCNM Around the Web September 2020

10 Sep, 2020

BCNM Around the Web September 2020

Check out the amazing work of our faculty, students, and alumni around the web this September!

Coye Cheshire

The Daily California News published an article stating that the COVID-19 pandemic has had “looming negative impacts” on the mental health of university students.

Coye Cheshire, a social psychology professor at the campus School of Information, emphasized that remote learning deprives students of the everyday collection of small, informal interactions, such as talking between classes or catching up over lunch, the lack of which can accumulate and take a toll on students’ mental health.

Read more here.

Camille Crittenden

The CITRIS Research Exchange (#CITRISRE) delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry, and civic leaders.

Camille will moderate a seminar on Oct.28th, on the topic of 'Blockchain for the Public Good'. Panelists include Brian Behlendorf (Executive Director, Hyperledger), Ben Bartlett (Partner, Tackett Bartlett LLP), and Michele Benedetto Neitz (Professor of Law, Golden Gate University School of Law). Moderated by Camille Crittenden, Ph.D., Executive Director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.

For more information and to register, click here.

Ken Goldberg

Ken Goldberg will be one of the guest speakers on the "COVID-19, Robots and Us" series. This holder is continuing the conversation about important robotics topics and socio-technical issues. They will invite domain experts and interesting thinkers to discuss topics relating to robotics innovation, commercialization, and inclusivity.

The guest speakers this week include Ayanna Howard, Georgia Tech; Tandy Trower, Hoaloha Robotics; Cory Kidd, Catalia Health; Ken Goldberg, artist, and roboticist.

Learn about this event here.

Jane McGonigal

In McGonigal’s book, 'Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Change the World', she states, “Compared with games, the reality is hard to get into. Games motivate us to participate more fully in whatever we’re doing.” This article encourages readers to gamify your employee advocacy program, which is a great way to encourage your employees to share across social media.

From the article:

McGonigal speaks a lot about alternate reality games, which are games you play in real life, not a digital environment. She talks specifically about an ARG called Chore Wars. It’s a chore management system that helps you keep track of housework and assign points to different tasks. The users are encouraged to give prizes to the top scorers, such as allowances if you’re playing with kids, coffee, candy, anything really. One of the players reported, “I live in a house in London with one other girl and six guys. A lot of times, I’m the only one tidying up, which was driving me slowly insane. I set up an account last night, and set some ‘adventures,’ and when I got up this morning everyone in the house was cleaning. I honestly could not believe what I was seeing. All we had to do is make it a competition! Now the guys are obsessed with beating each other!”

Read more here.

Bo Ruberg

On the website, it introduces Ruberg's research exploring gender and sexuality in digital media and digital cultures with a focus on queerness and video games. They are the author of The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (2020, Duke University Press) and Video Games Have Always Been Queer (2019, New York University Press) and the co-editor of Queer Game Studies (2017, University of Minnesota Press). Ruberg is also the co-founder and co-organizer of the annual Queerness and Games Conference. They received their Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with certification in New Media and Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and served as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Interactive Media and Games Division at the University of Southern California.

Click here for more information.