{"id":102,"date":"2022-07-15T10:08:32","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T14:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bsu.edu\/middletownstudies\/?page_id=102"},"modified":"2023-02-10T17:22:11","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T22:22:11","slug":"immersive-and-experiential-learning","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bsu.edu\/middletownstudies\/home\/immersive-and-experiential-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"IMMERSIVE AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Immersive and Experiential Learning Projects<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Students and community members work on the Riverside\/Normal City Neighborhood project<\/p><\/div>\n

The Center For Middletown Studies provides opportunities for students to participate in immersive and experiential learning projects at Ball State.\u00a0 These initiatives usually combine academic work with hands-on, collaborative community engagement to produce something of value for community-based partners.\u00a0 Examples of projects supported by the Center include the following:<\/p>\n

The Evolution of Getting a Living in Middletown<\/a><\/h3>\n

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Ball State students enrolled in Fall, 2022 section of History 414 (Seminar in Middletown Studies) produced \u201cThe Evolution of Getting a Living in Middletown<\/a>,\u201d a digital project that uses evidence about Muncie developed through Middletown research to explore the history of work experiences in modern America.\u00a0 The project uses Scalar, an open-source digital publishing platform provided through Ball State University Libraries. It enabled students to create a more complex, multilinear interpretation that includes interactive elements and employs a variety of media, including video, audio, and photographs along with text.<\/p>\n

The<\/strong> Other Side of Middletown<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

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This collaborative ethnography, undertaken in 2003-04 and spearheaded by Hurley Goodall, Eric Lassister (Anthropology), Elizabeth Campbell, and Michelle Natasya Johnson, resulted in the publication of The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie’s African American Community<\/em> (2004).\u00a0 This award-winning book explored the history and character of Muncie’s Black community, which had been largely neglected in other Middletown scholarship.\u00a0 It also serves as a model for collaborative ethnography, an approach in which authority is shared between scholars and community members.\u00a0 The work took place under the auspices of the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry at Ball State, with support from the Center.<\/p>\n

Adolescent Well-Being in Muncie<\/strong>\u00a0 <\/span><\/a>
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The Adolescent Well-Being in Muncie project\u00a0<\/span>wa<\/span>s a collaborative partnership between the Center for Middletown Studies and the Department of Sociology to establish an interdisciplinary immersive learning course. It provide<\/span>d<\/span>\u00a0students with an opportunity to collect data, analyze it, and investigate links between economic change and adolescent well-being. Working under the direction of Carolyn\u00a0<\/span>Kapinus<\/span>, Associate Professor of Sociology, and with the support of the Center <\/span>during the 2009-2010 academic year, students<\/span>\u00a0compile<\/span>d<\/span>\u00a0reports for community organizations such as the YMCA, Delaware County Court Appointed Special Advocates, and the Youth Opportunity Center.\u00a0<\/span>The project\u00a0<\/span>was supported by a Discovery Grant.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Changing Gears <\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

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From 2009-2011,\u00a0<\/span>Ball State\u2019s Institute for Digital Education and Entertainment and the Center for Middletown Studies jointly produced\u202f<\/span>Changing Gears<\/span><\/i>, a feature-length documentary film about the 2009<\/span> closing of Muncie\u2019s century-old Warner Gear auto parts plant and the meaning of the loss for workers and for the community.\u00a0 Students participated in the development of the film’s concept, research, interviewing, the creation of a treatment, and editing.\u00a0 <\/span>The project was funded in part with a grant from Ball State\u2019s Office of the Provost.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Middletown Read<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

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What Middletown Read is a collaborative project of The Center for Middletown Studies, Ball State University Libraries and the Muncie Public Library. Frank\u00a0<\/span>Felsenstein, now Reed D. Voran Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Ball State, uncovered a unique cache of surviving library records that document the books each borrower took from the local public library in Muncie. The project team converted this extraordinarily rich body of materials, supplemented by demographic data drawn from city directories and census records as well as bibliographic information, into a searchable, online database that contains details on more than 6,000 library patrons, 11,000 books, and 175,000 circulation transactions for the period from 1891-1902 (with one gap). More than twenty students, ranging from freshman to doctoral candidates, contributed to the effort.\u00a0 Construction of the database was made possible by financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and Ball State University. This rich resource, made publicly available in 2011, has received wide use by students, scholars, and members of the public since it launched.\u00a0 In 2015, Felsenstein and Center Director James Connolly published What Middletown Read: Print Culture in an American Small City<\/a> (Massachusetts).\u00a0 Later that year, the NEH highlighted What Middletown Read as one of 50 exemplary projects funded during its first 50 years of existence.
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Everyday Life in Middletown (EDLM)<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

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Everyday Life in Middletown is a collaboration between the Center for Middletown Studies and citizens of Muncie, Indiana, to record, represent, and discuss everyday life in our city. This ongoing effort began as a student-driven immersive learning project headed by Patrick Collier (English) sponsored by the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry and now operating under the auspices of the Center.\u00a0 EDLM documents the everyday in two ways: through day diaries, kept by volunteer writers who record their daily lives in detail and submit them to our archive, and through our blog, where we post commentary and discussion on everyday life in our community, including analysis of the diaries. In addition to VBC support, the project has received funding from BSU’s Digital Scholarship Lab.<\/p>\n

Muslims in Muncie<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

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The Center for Middletown Studies served as a partner on the\u00a0Muslims in Muncie<\/a>\u00a0Oral History and Documentary Project.\u00a0\u00a0 A Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry project headed by Elizabeth Agnew (Philosophy and Religious Studies) and undertaken in collaboration with the Islamic Center of Muncie, Muslims in Muncie produced an hour-long documentary and archived twenty-two oral history interviews that examine the experiences of local Muslim residents from the 1960s to the 2010s.\u00a0 The project was the recipient of the\u00a02019 Award for Oral History in a Non-Print Format from the Oral History Association\u00a0and the Alice Smith Prize in Public History from the Midwestern History Association.<\/p>\n

Workers and Industry in Muncie, Indiana, 1880-2012<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

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Graduate Students Brendan White (History\/Center for Middletown Studies) and Ike Obi (Digital Scholarship Lab) constructed a timeline of labor history in Muncie, Indiana, covering the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century.\u00a0\u00a0It\u00a0documents the experiences of workers in the context of the rise and fall of labor-intensive manufacturing in this emblematic American city.\u00a0 You can view the timeline\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Riverside\/Normal City Neighborhood Project<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n