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TheCloud9

THE TEAM

Eileen McGivney

Ann Bennett

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XR Producer / Researcher

Dennis Morgan

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Game and UX Design

Yash M.

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HCI Design &

Research

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Learning Experience Design & Research

Why Overcoming?

Young people today are striving to make social change, but they often don’t know how to be effective Change Agents.

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Overcoming leverages history from the Civil Rights Movement to connect past and present movements for racial justice, teach young people how social movements are built, and promote their self-efficacy as Change Agents.

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Through Diane Nash’s experience as a student leader in the Nashville Civil Rights Movement, learners see how ordinary citizens accomplished incredible social change.

A Documentary Video Game

We took on the ambitious goal of building a fully immersive video game within a non-fiction storytelling framework. Most games are works of fiction. What we wanted to do was re-envision what non-fiction can look like as an immersive experience.

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To this end, we recreated the Nashville 1960 Sit-ins, focusing on the sites and sounds and artifacts from the era while giving the player agency to explore and create their own movement.

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Helper messages

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Diane’s Team

Learning Goal Evaluation

Design for Learning Goals

We simplified the core game loop to reward the learner with additional, compelling content.

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In Overcoming, players are immersed in a rich, relatable environment. A non-fiction story unfolds through a tapestry of content building on the player’s acquired knowledge and skills.

Where Overcoming Will Take Us

We see IGNITE as a way for creators to tell more immersive non-fiction stories. By partnering with museums, writers, filmmakers, historical sites, and more, we hope to bring inclusivity, broader access, and new perspectives on non-fiction storytelling.

References

We recognize the significance and importance of the life and work of Ms. Diane Nash. Without this, none of what we did would be possible.�

Social and religious transformation scholar, Dr. Vincent Harding.�

The documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, produced by Henry Hampton’s Blackside Productions in a addition to footage from PBS, Learning Media and Democracy Now!�

And, all the freedom fighters who came before us and to follow.