Principal Investigator: Owen Gottlieb
CoPrincipal Investigator(s): Crystle Martin
Organization: Rochester Institute of Tech

Abstract:
The field of Games and Learning is relatively new and of rapidly growing in impact and importance. The project will build a network of early career Games and Learning scholars through in-person workshops supported and enhanced by on-line networking. The workshops will consist of several events including panels on publishing, small group mentor time with senior scholars, professional development planning activities, and a project development group. Overall participation at the workshops will be kept to 20 (10 scholars per cohort) scholars maximum to make the activities as impactful as possible for the participants and in order to be able to offer a travel stipend to participants. After the workshop, the project Principal Investigators (PIs) of the project will hold informal networking events at domain specific conferences throughout the year open to any early career Games and Learning scholar who is interested in participating. The PIs will also create an online network to bring early scholars together for online professional development support, collaboration, and networking. The online community will consists of a listserv.

This early career workshop will support the development of research skills and help support the developing research of early career scholars in order to grow and nurture the wider field, to bolster current research and to promote further research and collaboration in the field. To gauge the impact of this capacity building grant, the PIs will survey the workshop participants as well as the larger community that we build to determine what impact it has had on them. The project is supported by the Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program, which funds efforts that will help envision the next generation of learning technologies and advance what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. Cyberlearning Exploration (EXP) Projects explore the viability of new kinds of learning technologies by designing and building new kinds of learning technologies and studying their possibilities for fostering learning and challenges to using them effectively.