Dr. Emily Kuzneski Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Games and Interactive Media in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media at the University of Central Florida.
She is also core faculty in the Texts & Technology Ph.D. program. She makes and studies technologically mediated learning environments from interactive narratives to immersive language learning, her work spans platforms from PC to VR to AR/MR and just about everything in between. Johnson’s research is both quantitative and qualitative, often at the same time (mixed methods) to help shed light on multiple sides of a variety of research questions.
A former middle school Language Arts teacher, Johnson’s philosophy has always been that “learning that’s fun is fun!” When people are actively engaged, they can more effectively learn. Her middle school students were her first playtesters, kindling her desire to learn more about interactive media and its affordances for communication and learning. Selected projects are described below.
Recent Projects
Below are images from recent projects by Dr. Johnson:
BeadED Adventures
A STEM-education game with tangible learning artifacts. BeadED Adventures is an interactive narrative where participants solve STEM-based puzzles and make choices affecting the narrative plot using a nontraditional interface. Rather than manipulating a mouse or keyboard, players select the jar of beads that matches the color of the text on the screen to advance through the narrative, which creates a tangible learning artifact: a string of beads that can be worn as a bracelet or used as a keychain, bookmark, etc. The current prototype focuses on introducing novice, youth audiences to computational thinking concepts in an engaging Choose Your Own Adventure style narrative.
For more information and to experience the prototype narrative for yourself, click the button below.
ELLE the EndLess LEarner
An Interdisciplinary Collaboration. ELLE the EndLess LEarner a suite of language learning games for Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), mobile, and PC created in collaboration with faculty and staff members from the Office of Instructional Resources, the Center for Humanities and Digital Research, and Modern Languages, Games and Interactive Media, as well as groups of Computer Science students. Designed with the dual purpose of education and research, each game is linked to a database that stores terms and definitions and allows the player to select the level of difficulty and terms, ideal for a midterm review as well as an isolated research study.
For more information, click the button below.