Saturday, 31 March 2018
Designers, Researchers, Educators, and Gamers, Oh My!
THATCamp 2018 at Marshall University
Brittany Hively
While educators, researchers, designers, and gamers may have an internal link, they’re not often found in the same room. THATCamp changed that Saturday, March 31, 2018, when it came to Marshall University’s Visual Arts Center.
THATCamp was a one-day conference open to both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty and staff. The event was attended by scholars and students from Marshall University, Ohio University (OU), and Kent State University.
In the day of fast-paced and ever-changing media, this event is beneficial to many across the board. “We think we are shaping media, but really in a way, media is shaping us, ” explained Joe Carver, during one of the segments. Carver is the director of student support in Ohio University’s Office of Instructional Innovation, and he joined Ohio University Chief Information Officer, Craig Bantz, and several Ohio University librarians and faculty at the event.
The day consisted of the group coming together with introductions and sharing their studies and aspirations for the day. Being an unconference, they then went on to use their expertise and goals to make a schedule of sessions that they would attend throughout the day. Digital design and coding, archives to digital media, useful Digital Humanities tools, and mapping technologies were just a few of the topics that were discussed throughout the day.
“This conference, bringing this to Marshall is innovating and moving Marshall forward,” said Christine Ingersoll, MU professor of Media Design. Ingersoll attended the event with around fifty other professional peers with a hunger for professional discussion and development.
Not only does the conference bring a unique open discussion and free-range schedule, but options are available for those unable to attend. The conference’s website was kept up to-date throughout the day with schedules, discussions questions, and useful links.
The idea of the event was brought up last semester during the advisory board meeting for the Digital Humanities program. The idea was to bring students and faculty together. Professors Kristen Lillvis and Hilton Córdoba were the head coordinators for the event. When asked about the future of THATCamp, “The energy of this event, we’re trying to push forward to this semester more, but also in the future doing another THATCamp to keep it going,” Lillvis said. “Digital Humanities is an intercollegiate minor, so we have faculty and courses all throughout the university,” Lillvis explained. “It [digital humanities] has been around for a while, but it’s really only the last few years that universities have put as much focus on it. So, it’s still pretty brand new at Marshall. Our minor is official only as of this semester.”
The conference was free to all students, both high school and college, and $30.00 for anyone else. This fee included a t-shirt, lunch, coffee, and snacks. The day was sponsored by the College of Science, College of Liberal Arts, Department of English, Department of Geography, Honors College, School of Art & Design, University Communications, and OU’s Office of Instructional Innovation.
For more information about things discussed throughout the day, useful links shared, future events, or to just get a feel for the event, visit the event’s website http://marshall2018.thatcamp.org. To learn more about the Digital Humanities field you can contact Dr. Kristen Lillvis at lillvis@marshall.edu.