At Dartmouth College’s Jones Media Center (JMC), 30-second course promotional trailers are intentionally designed as more than marketing tools. From the beginning, the initiative has served as a creative outreach strategy to encourage faculty to think beyond traditional assignments and explore multimodal teaching, digital storytelling, podcasting, video production, and other media-rich approaches to learning. Created collaboratively by the JMC Digital Media Fellow and media staff, each trailer begins with conversations about course objectives, teaching methods, and meaningful media or visual elements connected to the course, as well as the kinds of experiences faculty hope students will have in their classrooms. The Fellow also works closely with the Dartmouth Libraries Communications Manager throughout the process to better understand branding, audience engagement, visual identity, and effective campus communication strategies. These discussions frequently open pathways to broader collaborations involving media assignments, public-facing scholarship, oral histories, community-engaged storytelling, and other creative projects supported by the media center.The finished trailers are displayed in JMC, across campus on digital signage, departmental websites, faculty pages, and online platforms, increasing visibility for courses while simultaneously showcasing the creative and instructional support available through the library and media center.This presentation will examine the workflow behind the trailers, the role of student media producers in the process, and how short-form media can function as an approachable entry point for deeper faculty engagement with multimodal pedagogy.
Visualization of complex molecular interactions in cell biology and immunology is challenging, yet necessary to understand how receptor-ligand engagement on the cell surface translates into immune activation and other functions. Understanding the molecular interactions in the submicroscopic world engenders advanced spatial awareness and requires the capacity to project 3D objects from the 2D rendition in publications and textbooks. 3D ball and stick models have traditionally been used in chemistry and molecular biology education as tactile and visual means to teach about molecular structures. However, these models do not represent biologically important receptor-ligand interactions. Students often assign incomplete biochemical meaning to the physical structures in textbooks because the way we conceive space is embodied. This presentation will describe the creation and successful implementation of laboratory modules in a 400-level immunology course for biology majors, with principles translatable to other upper-level courses. Students were engaged to familiarize with molecular structure, recognition, and interaction via complementary 3D printing and VR exploration using Nanome. Students physically and virtually manipulated two multi-part objects: a T-cell receptor and an antibody-antigen complex. Undergraduates reported that the lab sequences improved their functional and structural understanding of these challenging biomolecular complexes. Students also appreciated the personalized exploration of the structures in different representations, scales, and atomic resolution in the VR environment.
How do you transform a collection of tools into a thriving hub of innovation? This 30-minute workshop explores the evolution of makerspace electronics through the lens of my journey as the Innovative Media Librarian at UC Riverside and my prior tenure at the University of La Verne.Attendees will go behind the scenes of establishing successful electronics and robotics initiatives, including the development of UCR’s Robotics Lab—an extension of the Creat’R Lab. I will share the strategies used to scale programming from K-12 summer camps to high-demand workshops for diverse undergraduate and graduate populations.The session focuses on practical takeaways, addressing common challenges such as:Curriculum Design: Creating beginner-friendly entry points (like animatronics) for non-technical majors.Resource Management: Selecting the right tools for 3D modeling and fabrication to support diverse projects.Community Engagement: Building outreach programs that result in sold-out sessions and waitlists.Whether you are starting from scratch or looking to revitalize an existing space, this workshop provides a roadmap for building robust, sustainable electronics programming. Participants will leave with actionable insights on technical implementation and community-building to ensure that once their makerspace is built, the students will indeed come.
As academic institutions increasingly rely on video production for instructional materials and student assignments, the need for accessible, affordable, and flexible studio setups has never been greater. Yet many so-called "one-button" solutions are anything but simple, often proving difficult to set up, expensive to maintain, and overly reliant on proprietary hardware and software that can go obsolete without warning.In this session, I will share my experience developing the Simple Studio, a media production model built for academic libraries that prioritizes affordability, modularity, and long-term sustainability. Unlike vendor-dependent solutions, this approach uses components that can be sourced through multiple vendors, assembled in-house, and maintained without specialized expertise.The session covers the full process: assessing your space, selecting components, and implementing a studio design that centers both user ease and back-end manageability. I will also address common challenges including budget constraints, staff training, and ongoing upkeep. By examining both the front-end user experience and the back-end realities of running a studio, this session offers an honest and practical counterpoint to the complexity often hiding behind "simple" solutions.Whether you are starting from scratch or renovating an existing setup, attendees will leave with adaptable strategies and a clearer sense of what becomes possible when the workflow from both the front-end and back-end are truly "simple."
Join us for PROJECTions and a conference wrap up! PROJECTions are short video presentations similar to lightning talks designed to show off quick projects. We have 7 PROJECTions before we wrap up before ACTAL Annual November 2026.
