Final Essay - Hunter Rose Myers

In my final essay, I chose the topic of data mining. My essay is titled Covertly Clandestine because data mining is a form of unraveling hidden secrets. I begin my essay by providing background information on the subject of data mining, as well as discussing researchers who have made both negative and positive comments about data mining. For the empirical research section, I chose to data mine song lyrics written by Beatles members John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I did this in order to compare the two artists and find out what word frequencies can reveal about popular music. Enjoy.

Final Essay - Rachel Heming

My final essay is titled Exploring Multiple Endings in Video Games. It discusses the different ways developers implement multiple endings and the reasons for doing so.

RPG's

Role Playing Video Games: Traversing through an Alternate Universe

For my final project, I wanted to focus on a topic near and dear to my heart: Role Playing Video Games. RPG's always appealed to me, and for my paper, I wanted to answer a few questions about them: What they are, how we interact inside and out the video game, what relationships and bonds do we develop from the games, and what positive mental, physical, and social benefits we can receive from playing RPGs.

The title of my final essay is Video Games and Books; A More Immersive Narrative. This essay talks about video games being a more immersive narrative since they capitalize on the benefits of the digital world.

Essay Exhibits

This semester, our class has learned a great amount about digital humanities. The essay exhibits that we created demonstrated not only the diversity of the field, but also how much we've learned. No two exhibits that I viewed were about the same thing, and I'm sure there were many other topics we could have covered. It is truly amazing to think about how expansive digital humanities is and how much we're still learning about it.

One exhibit that I found especially interesting was The Intersection of "Video Games and Religion" by Hunter Graham. His exhibit detailed that lack of attention video games get regarding religious reference and why this should not be the case. He cited examples such as the Zelda series's focus on three goddesses and how it was initially going to have elements of Christianity in it. The Game Journey was also included, and how the journey through the game is similar to someone traversing through life to reach a destination. His exhibit made me realize just how little attention is paid to religious references in games compared to other media.

Another exhibit that I  viewed was Caitee Baird's "Electronic Literature: New and Improved English?" It discussed the benefits of integrating electronic literature into classroom settings. One of the key benefits was that it appeals to students that have different learning styles, such as kinetic poems to hands-on learners and art-based pieces for visual learners. She even gave some exam
ples of types of e-lit that would be appropriate for each age level: literacy apps for elementary school, Google maps essays for middle school, and various kinds for high school. In a world that is advancing technologically very quickly, her essay addressed topics that many schools will likely have to discuss in the coming years.

All of the exhibits explored topics and asked questions that exemplify what our class has learned this semester. It was interesting to see each person's specific areas of interest in this diverse and expaniding field.

Essay Exhibits

     Over the course of this semester, I have gained an abundance of information, tools, and techniques involving digital culture which can help me in all areas of life. Whether I am creating a presentation for a job, researching materials, or fiddling around with technology in my leisure time, this Digital Humanities course has provided me with amateur experience, as well as highlighting new interests.
     Our final class project is creating an essay comprised of researched materials exploring multimedia in digital humanities. As an insider to what other students are writing about, our class exhibited a brief presentation of our individual essay ideas, and our classmates provided feedback about our projects.
     One of the projects I viewed in detail was about Virtual Reality and how it could affect job training. It begins by defining Virtual Reality (VR) a 3D world, created digitally, that allows the user to interact and manipulate objects within the world while stimulating each one of their senses. Next, there is a short video explaining VR more in depth. Then, career fields that are adopting VR practices are listed, including: Healthcare, Education, Advertising, Military, etc. Finally, it tells how a few of these careers use VR in their job training programs. I thought this exhibit was interesting because it demonstrates how growing digital technologies are being used in every day life, and could possibly affect us in our future jobs.

     Another project that I viewed in detail was about Video Games in the Education System. First, it defines gamification as the process of taking something that already exists and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation and engagement. Next, the presentation explains how video games are already implemented into the education system and what ways they can benefit students. For example, changes in cognitive development and socialization skills are detailed as improving children's' visual processes, attention span, relationship readiness. Finally, it closes with a brief video outlining the basics of gamification in school programs. I appreciated this exhibit because I would have liked being exposed to this type of teaching technique while in high school. However, maybe my children can benefit from this type of learning in the future.

Essay Exhibits

Walking around and viewing many of my classmates final presentations, it truly illustrates how massive the field of Digital Humanities is. Throughout the exhibits, it was very interesting to come across all of the different topics that so many people found interest in, such as video games, technological convergence, data-mining, and even Google Maps essays. One of my favorite essay exhibits I viewed was by Dominique Marini. Dom covered the idea of the benefits from playing video games, from a Social, Emotional, and Physical perspective. I could personally relate to Dom's project, which I believe is why I enjoyed learning about what he had to say. Growing up playing video games my whole life, I found it interesting to make connections between Dom's research and my own personal experience with video games, especially when the topic of Skyrim came up: a game I have spent many many hours playing myself. Dom's presentation was well informed and brought up many thought provoking ideas.

A second presentation I viewed and enjoyed was Jon Dicey's presentation of the prevalence of video games in modern-day society. Dicey used a wide variety of data to determine who are today's "video gamers," and what video games are most commonly played and how they have changed. He also added into his project of how the majority of these people playing video games are affected by playing them.


Each presentation I viewed intriguingly and uniquely captured the area of the Digital Humanities field that they were covering. However, some of the most interesting projects I viewed were all centered around video games because I could both learn and provide input for these presentations. My final project is centered around video games, so all these exhibits also provided some inspiration for my own project as well.