Student Blogs, Tweets, Videos Share Out-of-Classroom Learning

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IUPUI Senior Eugene Pride has never really felt as if he had a “real student” to show him what college life is really like.

And the self-described “average” student says he “was very traditional in the past just thinking ‘go to class and get the degree’ not knowing true education is much more than that.”

But this summer, Pride is not only stepping out of his “traditional” box and studying abroad in Poland, he is also one of seven IUPUI students who are sharing a real look at their college lives using new media.

As the inaugural class of the Summer Impact project, the seven – Pride, Freddy Barnes, Meghan Cross, Christin Johnson, Brandon Muncy, Samantha (“Sam”) Townsley, and Richard Turley - will stay connected with “friends” and “followers” throughout the summer with blogs, tweets, Flickr photos, and YouTube videos posted on IUPUI Web pages.

Their real student experiences can be accessed through the Summer Impact home page www.iupui.edu/summerimpact .

Pride, a liberal arts senior, will spend almost three weeks in Poland taking an intercultural communications course before returning to Indiana to finish out the summer as an intern in the Indiana Statehouse.

He signed up for Summer Impact because “this project can encourage new and current students to reach out of their comfort zone and study abroad, get an internship, do research, etc.,” Pride says.

“I want new students to know . . . learning takes place in more places than a classroom,” he says. “My expectations of the project are to help students feel welcome to the university and to know it’s possible to do cool things that can help you grow.”

Those “cool things” for IUPUI students include opportunities for undergraduate research. Sam Townsley is one of the Summer Impact students who will share research experiences with friends and followers.

“If you've ever wondered what the inside of an eye looks like, you might be able to see it if you follow my posts,” Townsley said. The senior biology major is an undergraduate researcher in a campus lab studying limb or retinal regeneration in frogs or salamanders in hopes of finding a cure for human paralysis.

“I plan to have a lab tour just to let people get the feel of the lab,” Townsley said.

IUPUI intentionally uses research, study abroad, service learning, and workplace internships to prepare its students for graduate school, careers, and community engagement.

The newly created “RISE to the IUPUI Challenge” program encourages all IUPUI undergraduate students to incorporate at least two experiential learning courses into their degree programs. As implied by the acronym “RISE,” the courses fall into four categories: research; international studies; service learning; and workplace and community experiential learning.

IUPUI students will be able to take RISE to the IUPUI Challenge courses beginning with the Fall Semester, 2009. Students’ transcripts will note their experiential accomplishments.

To showcase the research, study abroad and other experiential learning experiences of students through virtual media “is something that I have always wanted to do,” says Office of Communications and Marketing electronic media director Steve Hodges, who is coordinating Summer IMPACT.

“You can follow a student via his or her Summer Impact Web page all summer long,” says Hodges, who worked with communications staff in the offices of the vice chancellor of research, international affairs and the School of Liberal Arts to develop Summer Impact. Hodges anticipates the Summer Impact accounts could very well serve as student-driven publicity for the RISE initiative.

As a Summer Impact student Brandon Muncy hopes to correct what he sees as misconceptions about his chosen career field.

“During the course of the blog, photos, tweets and other such things I hope to show how valuable archaeology is to the campus,” says Brandon Muncy, who is enrolled in the Archaeological Field School. The class is excavating the site of Madam C.J. Walker’s house and factory. He hopes his blog, tweets and video, will also give “students and staff a realistic view of what field work is actually like as opposed to the whip-wielding, ruins-exploring vision of the field offered by Hollywood.”

Summer Impact is a volunteer program. Although selected to participate by their respective academic schools or units, the students will not receive compensation or classroom credit for the online “diaries” they will post under the Summer Impact banner.