The CMS Research Fair is designed primarily to give undergraduate students and interested parties from across MIT's campus a better idea of the type of work we do through our academic program and the research groups affiliated with it. This event is also open to the public, and we'd love to have some of the C3 blog readership in attendance.

Research groups will both be presenting more information about the type of work they do as part of the event, as well as having representatives on hand to discuss that work with passers-by. For any of you who would like to talk with us in person about the work we do here at MIT, it would be a great opportunity for you to do so.

In addition, this will give you a chance to better understand where the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium is situated and what the Program in Comparative Media Studies is. As one of six research groups for the program, the work we conduct here about how cultural and technological changes are impacting the media industries and audiences is situated in a broader range of work done across all of these groups.

For more information:

The MIT Comparative Media Studies program is committed to the art of thinking across media forms, theoretical domains, cultural contexts, and historical periods. Both our graduate and undergraduate programs encourage the bridging of theory and practice, as much through course work as through participation in faculty and independent research projects. The goal of our program is not to replicate existing paradigms, but as an early CMS backer said, to prepare students for jobs that don't yet exist. We consult regularly with leaders in industry, the arts, public policy, journalism, education, and the nonprofit sector, trying to understand contemporary developments, identify job and internship opportunities, and pinpoint skills and knowledge which will help prepare our students for new opportunities. Our courses are designed to teach students to both make and reflect upon media and in the process, to acquire important skills in team work, leadership, problem solving, collaboration, brainstorming, communications, and project completion, which will prepare them for a broad range of academic and professional careers.

The MIT Center for Future Civic Media is a joint effort between the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. It has been made possible by a four-year grant from the Knight Foundation. The Center for Future Civic Media will work to create technical and social systems for sharing, prioritizing, organizing, and acting on information. These include developing new technologies that support and foster civic media and political action; serving as an international resource for the study and analysis of civic media; and coordinating community-based test beds both in the United States and internationally.

The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab is a five-year research initiative between Singapore and the Program in Comparative Media Studies that addresses important challenges faced by the global digital game research community and industry, with a core focus on identifying and solving research problems using a multi-disciplinary approach that can be applied by Singapore's digital game industry. The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab focuses on building collaborations between Singapore institutions of higher learning and several MIT departments to accomplish both research and development.

Project New Media Literacies is a research initiative funded by the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation which develops a theoretical framework and hands-on curriculum for K-12 students that integrates new media tools into broader educational, expressive and cultural frameworks.

The Hyperstudio Laboratory for Digital Humanities is sponsored by the Foreign Languages & Literatures Department in close collaboration with the Comparative Media Studies Program and faculty in the Literature Department here at MIT. The initiative explores the potential of new media technologies for the enhancement of education and research in the humanities and social sciences.

For more information on the Convergence Culture Consortium, look here.
The Education Arcade was established at MIT by leading scholars of digital games and education to promote learning through authentic and engaging play. The group's research and development focuses both on the learning that naturally occurs when playing popular commercial games and the design of games that more vigorously address the educational needs of players.