The Berkeley Center for New Media is pleased to announce four undergraduate research fellowships are open for application for spring 2024! Selected students will have the opportunity to work closely with new media graduate students on dissertation-level research. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $1,000.
If you are interested in multiple projects, please submit separate applications for each project.
Applications are now open. Applications are due November 1, 2023. Apply here!
Projects for Undergraduate Research Assistance Spring 2024
Interactive Learning Board to Help Children Learn Digestive Education with a Multimodal Approach
This project blends modern learning methods and educational technology. The project will create an interactive learning board specifically for children in the 8–12 age range by integrating cutting-edge technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI). The goal is to fully immerse pupils in experiential learning around nutrition rather than merely facilitating rote learning.
This design product has its own instructional principle at its core. The materials will be provided in a construction kit in order for students to better comprehend the digestion and absorption process. This strategy boosts their focus while also increasing their level of participation.
This initiative aims to reframe conventional learning strategies with the goals of increasing engagement, reducing educational inequities, and enhancing overall learning effectiveness. A further extension of our goal, taking into account the universal applicability and scalability of such technologies, is to make these resources available to kids everywhere, enabling a democratic and enriching educational experience for all.
Co-creating Public Health Communications on Social Media
Public health communications are only as effective as the media they are delivered through. In today's digital age, the overwhelming amount of information on social media can either empower or hinder public health efforts. The COVID-19 pandemic starkly illustrated the challenges public health messaging faces when confronted with the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms. Our research project aims to generate evidence-based recommendations that can potentially reshape public health communication strategies and counter the mis/disinformation in Southeast Asia, home to one of the world's fastest-growing populations of social media users.
Through this fellowship, an undergraduate researcher will have the opportunity to work closely with a Doctor of Public Health candidate. Her research interests center around addressing the digital infodemic, particularly in the context of public health information in Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia (mutually intelligible languages that are widely spoken across multiple Southeast Asian countries). The undergraduate researcher will actively participate in the preparation and execution of virtual human-centered design workshops, which will be co-facilitated and participated by our stakeholders in Southeast Asia. The undergraduate researcher's role will involve:
1. Providing creative and technical expertise to guide workshop participants in the co-creation of short-form videos containing public health messages,
2. Developing training materials to support and empower participants in the process of creating short-form videos, utilizing accessible and user-friendly platforms like Canva
3. Gaining hands-on experience in qualitative research, such as data collection and analysis, to contribute to a deeper understanding of the public health issue
An ideal candidate is creative, organized and proactive; is able to demonstrate at least an intermediate level of expertise in designing social media content and videos on Canva; can offer valuable insights on the storytelling, visual aesthetics and technical aspects of content creation; has some experience in community engagement and cultural humility; and is highly motivated to learn key skills in training and research. Being able to speak Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Indonesia is an advantage but not a requirement. All majors/ minors are welcomed!
State of Mind | State of Mine
The breaking apart of the American state is as old as the concept of the United States itself. This project seeks to document the scale of state secessionist movements through time using primary and secondary sources. The broader context of this project is a study of the co-creation of space at the intersection of rural right-wing sociopolitical movements, climate collapse, and social media. This is with the intention of rethinking how we theorize the creation of space, and more specifically, how we may or may not conceptualize distance/proximity with the idea of better explaining the dynamics of right-wing movements, the rural-urban divide, online communities, and how all these things intersect. This is an open project in regard to direction. The ideal candidate would be ready to engage with supervisor on the question of how to make the resulting research available the broader public on a public facing digital platform.
This undergraduate researcher would join a team of three URAPs, duties will include: + co-create a database of state secessionist movements + find and document data sources (archival research/online research) + discuss/shape project direction with day-to-day supervisor + read literature related to the topic of state secessionist movements The student would be incorporated into my preexisting mentorship model where we have one bi-weekly meeting and then one 1:1 meeting a month where we chat about their research interests.
Annotating Landscape: Black Land in the Delta
In the Lower Mississippi River Basin, a place colloquially known as ‘The Delta,’ enslaved, bonded, and working class Black Laborers have, alongside the River, been central forces in shaping/holding stable/making possible the past and contemporary landscape. Today, after waves of great migrations, years of acute economic depression, and structural forms of erosion often only traces of these rich life worlds remain, scattered across material, mnemonic, and digital archives — with place, memory, and meaning at risk of erasure. This project questions the ways in which landscape can be studied, understood and re-presented through immersive New Media (particularly virtual/augmented reality among other forms of spatial media) to account for the endurance, possibility, and to reconstruct the ephemera of working class Black life. Inspired by the visual and constructive methodologies used by creative and experimental geographers, the digital humanities, digital archeology, and the investigatory group Forensic Architecture, this project seeks to question, map, model, and digitally annotate Black-Land formations in a section of this shifting landscape.
This project seeks assistance from an undergraduate researcher in scraping/organizing multiple formats of spatial information (including but not exclusive to maps, waypoints, shapefiles, archival images, and oral history interviews) into a cartographic regression and a singular database. A research assistant would also be welcome to assist in designing a library of 3 Dimensional object files / historical assets / mock architectural models, either by original design or by use of photogrammetry. Finally, students will have the ability to assist in developing a best practices protocol, providing feedback on iterative practice demonstrations working with VR/AR media and the co-constructive spatial methodology being developed through and at the core of this project.
Previous Undergraduate Research Fellows and Projects
2023 funded candidates and projects here and here!
2022 funded candidates and projects here and here!
2021 funded candidates and projects here!
2020 funded candidates and projects here!
2019 funded candidates and projects here!
2018 funded candidates and projects here!
2017 funded candidates and projects here!