GHDW Internship

GHDW Internship Summer 2020

Summer 2020 Internship Report

Joy Hannam

GHDW working group

Joy Hannam worked with the Games and Gamification for Human Development and Well-being (GHDW) working group as part of her internship program in IHDW. Joy’s focus area was to develop a multifaceted package of resources to be available on the GHDW webpage. This package of resources covers the following five areas:

• A detailed list of educational or serious games for wellbeing, social change, science, mental health and similar topics; This list helps the researchers, who are interested in serious games topics, to familiarize themselves with multiple samples of these types of educational tools.
• A list of Internship positions and companies, who might offer internship positions; This list helps the students, who are interested in learning more practically on different aspects of serious game design (game design, game development, story writing, etc.) to find potential internship positions. Joy has researched and introduced various internships and opportunities that are available to people who are interested in serious gaming, and game work, at the local, Canadian level, north American and abroad.
• List of serious game design courses (online & offline); Joy is helping to compile a list for online design courses in the theme of both serious game design and game design in general. This is enhancing the scope to which people who are unfamiliar with serious games can look to and understand what resources are valuable to them.
• List of conferences that regularly are held in the world on the relevant topics to educational or serious games and games for change. Another aspect of this internship is enhancing the website conference section by adding clarity and frequency of conferences, summits, and opportunities for serious game design, networking and outreach.
• List of peer-reviewed journals on games studies and game design; This list suggests some of the academic journals that are being published in the area of gaming and game design.

Webinar

Moreover, Joy has been working on designing a poster for the Gaming to Feel Better webinar, which was one of the GHDW activities. She also took on a personal project of creating an infographic for the serious games, where she is happy to be putting her graphic design skills to work and introducing the basics of serious games to the general audience.

Research

On a more research-based activity, Joy helped with a research proposal development for the Lyle Spencer Research Awards to Transform Education. She mainly helped with note-taking in team meetings and researching specifically serious games in the Global South Context, and in Africa, and specifically in Ghana.

Infographic

As a last part of her internship Joy was pleased to take on the task of creating an infographic which centered around serious games. This she hopes will be accessible to people when they look at the Games and Gamification website as it will clear up confusion on the difference between regular games, and those which serve a purpose.

Joy hopes to take what she has learned in this internship and apply it to understand fully how serious games can help spark social change and address different issues in various contexts. As well as see how games that are used for fun can be applied in settings like education, health care, social work and more.

The International Cellphilming Festival for Spring 2020 has a great success, and Joy is happy to be a part of helping to make the team succeed. In this role she took up various work in graphics, social media and logistical support for the Cellphilming festival. She was fascinated to learn and see how wellbeing is impacted in the time of distancing. This was particularly interesting as it helped demonstrate the how the impact was felt on a global scale.

Social media

Joy helped with social media mainly in this context. In particular to making Q&A posters as part of a countdown strategy. Afterwards she also worked on posters for the day of the event and helped to make sure that these images were clear, bright and fit to the overall theme of this year. Keeping colours, images and patterns which were consistence with original advertisements.

The Cellphilming Guide

Joy also helped to beatify documents, in specific the document “Let’s getting philming! A working guide to cellphilming with young participants” by Joshua Schwab Cartas. Here she aided in making sure the document looked readable and also stylish with graphic touches such as borders, and text boxes. This was especially enriching for Joy as she was able to hone in on her graphic design skills more thoroughly.

The Cellphilm Festival

Joy was responsible for backup help and recording the day of the festival. Thankfully everything went smoothly so Joy assisted after the festival in creating a transcript of the judges feedback, and speeches that was used to reflect upon. This information was eventually used, with the permission of those who spoke, to be turned into quote posters. This is where Joy added silhouettes of the speakers, and their quote, in a picture format to be shared on social media.

Post festival

Joy helped the team in arranging congratulations certificates to the winners, as well as assist in watching the videos from all the submissions writing about them. This involved a review the content and commenting on what the message was, and a short synopsis of the video. Joy was also responsible to finding out a communication strategy for indigenous, as well as African partners. By taking already existing partnerships with the institute and compiling a list which will be easier to access for future cellphilms. Moreover, she also helped to develop a strategy for young adults, and for McGill students. This is where she looked at universities other than McGill, and also local film schools. This she thought are feasible connections to reach out to next festival season. She also looked at finding marginalized groups on campus and making connections with them to be part of the Cellphilm Festival. She hopes that this communication strategy will bridge the gap between the creatives and the academics in the scope of what the cellphilming festival is all about.

Infographic

In one of the last projects Joy was able to help to make two main infographics. One which is on What are Cellphilms and another on 5 Steps to making Cellphilms. This was a good way for her to tie in what she had learned from the internship and explore how the expanded reach and capacity of Cellphilming. This help Joy learn even more about different types of visual methodologies that can be applied in a public and virtual setting. Here this was exciting as it was an output that used her graphic design skills once again.

Joy was also please to help out on other projects such as beautifying reports for the More Than Words node of the Institute for Human Development and Wellbeing. She was pleased to see her graphics used in a variety of MTW outputs.

Joy was also keen on helping out with the entire team of interns, as well as with the group from LOTA program to create a booklet related to Mobilizing Technologies in The Time of CO-Vid. Which she hopes will be a useful resource for many during the unpresented times. In specific she was working on developing sections for the Photovoice, and Cellphilming. As well as hone skills in graphic design once again to develop the final product further.