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tags: cd
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# Media & Design Fellow Projects

## Science Communication

Media & Design Fellows in the sciences and social sciences often support projects that involve using graphic design and other visual forms to convey technical content and to reach wide audiences. Below are examples of some of the key forms MDFs have supported in this zone.

### Explainer videos

SCRB 111: Regeneration: Phenomena to Mechanisms

### Academic posters

PSY 1018: The Science and Psychology of Music

HIST 1056: New Science of the Human Past

### Infographics, social media posts, posters for general audience

PSY 980T: Eating Disorders


PSY 1816: Broken Brains: Mechanisms and Markers of Mental Illness

### Graphical Abstracts
MCB 197: Gene Regulation: A Bench-to-Bedside Journey


### Resources Made by MDFs
* [Scientific Illustration Resource](https://hackmd.io/op5I844hR0mYyCc2diTH4A)
* [Scientific Poster Design Resource](https://hackmd.io/UnNMgEasQbGQ8FTZA3zJDw)
* [BioRender Resource](https://hackmd.io/T9FnCdPXS1KFAyHFpI32dw)
* [Podcast Resource](https://hackmd.io/ihXXhbCuR8ey7ywvulCarQ)

### MDF Project Reports
These MDF reports detail the specific projects our science MDFs worked on this past year.
* [Arianna Lord (MDF in OEB)](https://hackmd.io/xw9BhPKVRZKHZMzKbxU2Lw)
* [Alexa Pérez Torres (MDF in MCB)](https://hackmd.io/98DRrRfVQoOI350tT_uV0g?view)

## Multimodal Communication in the Humanities and Social Sciences



Media & Design Fellows in the humanities and social sciences often support projects that involve using different media forms and digital tools to communicate their academic ideas. Below are descriptions of some of the key forms MDFs have supported in this zone.

## Video Essays, Podcasts, Maps, Illustration

### GENED 1145: Global Japanese Cinema



In this workshop for GENED 1145: Global Japanese Cinema, students had the opportunity to engage with film analysis reflecting on various filmic elements such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, composition, and framing. The workshop was structured around the central theme of layering, revealing the various layers of a film, and animation. The goal was two-fold: first, to familiarize students with the elements that comprise a film’s style and visual storytelling; second, to inspire deeper reflection on how these elements can be incorporated into students’ video essays. In discussing these filmic and conceptual techniques, students explored how filmic elements combined elicit coherent and affective viewing experiences. Additionally, the workshop highlighted the relationship between narrative structure and formal qualities of the cinematic medium.

### COMPLIT 108X: Prize-Winning Translations, 2010-2020

For their final project, students in Prize-Winning Translations imagine themselves as members of a literary prize committee to make a case for why a particular shortlisted novel should win the award. Lara first helped Professor Leafgren expand this assignment to include an audio modality. In this part of the assignment, students would record a conversation in small groups, debating why either the same or different novels should win the award. Rather than submitting raw audio from their discussions, students were also tasked with scripting the conversation (similar to a podcast) and performing some basic audio editing. The educational objectives were for students to be able to articulate arguments about literary texts in a public-facing format and to explore how to construct those arguments not through a traditional academic essay, but through audio or a podcast.

Through the Learning Lab, Lara provided course support through two workshops. The first workshop was more conceptual and focused on how to argue about literature within the context of a prize committee (what kinds of value judgments are appropriate in that context? How do they compare to the arguments made in academic literary analysis? how can you develop interview questions that help propel an engaging discussion about the novels?), identifying a target audience, analyzing and evaluating translations alongside the original, and exploring how the audio form could amplify those arguments. The second workshop Lara organized was aimed at developing podcast scripts from a recorded conversation. This workshop had demonstrated to students how audio formats require editing and production that allow listeners to focus on specific ideas and arguments.

### ENGLISH 184CF: City Fictions Mapping Workshop


Students in ENGLISH 184CF: City Fictions create two maps of either London or Mumbai that, when viewed together, reveal something profound about the ways in which life is lived and experienced in that city. To help students learn about the conceptual work that maps can do--as well as to introduce them to the formal components of maps--Lara designed and facilitated a workshop at the Learning Lab that allowed students to quickly prototype maps and receive feedback on them. Lara had students choose from a series of themes (gender, age, religion, desire, species, mode of transport, time of day) and then create maps of Cambridge that reveal how that theme is articulated in space. Students used projections of maps, paper maps, and digital mapping tools to create quick prototypes of these maps, reflecting in the process on the viability of their project (e.g., the challenge of collecting data, how significant the insight is, how to visualize this insight).

### GENED 1078: Disease, Illness, and Health Through Literature Creative Final Projects Workshop

Media & Design Fellow Bes (CompLit) brought students from GENED 1078 to the Learning Lab as they prepared their final creative projects to learn about different media forms and what they enable one to communicate. Bes had students unpack multimodal forms (a video essay and a podcast) and asked students to think about how their constituent parts work together to tell a compelling story. Bes really wanted students to grasp that every media form has its specific ways of communicating knowledge and insight, representing and conveying experience, and reaching an imagined audience. Students were encouraged to choose their medium intentionally for this final creative project, depending on their goals and the specific story they wanted to tell. Bes then gave students readings from the course and asked them to remediate that course reading in different forms, using audio, graphic design and illustration, and video. Students then had to think about the strengths and limitations of each of these media for communicating the key insights of that reading. This exercise intended to introduce students to the kind of critical insight about media forms that they could carry into their plans for and development of the final creative project.

### Resources Made by MDFs
* [Podcast Resource](https://hackmd.io/XFSHG4vvSneMP30wUb5YdA?view)
* [ArcGIS StoryMaps Resource](https://hackmd.io/ZeLmuUCNQLOHABUbc5SXXg)
* [Canva Resource](https://hackmd.io/PnabL7JuQM2ESa-9IqrkDw?view)