The theme for the 2023-2024 Community Connections in Tech & Design class is the Zombie Apocalypse!   The class is currently being designed to be heavily gamified, exploring a variety of topics:

• Zombies in popular culture

• How diseases are spread

• How governments are formed

• Ethics

• Surviving in a post-apocalyptic world

  • Power sources

  • Growing food

Students were introduced to the course, explored the syllabus and were given the opportunity to preview a few of the projects they were going to engage in throughout the term.

We discussed examples of zombies in popular culture (we will be going over this throughout the course) before the first gamified element of the class began.  Students needed to create the 'persona' they were going to play during the class.   We brainstormed examples, but the first assignment was writing a detailed character synopsis on the discussion board in Canvas.  Students are also required to write a journal entry in the voice of their character every night (that the class meets) processing what was learned/discussed during class, but using a creative story-based narrative.