On January 24th Helsinki hosted a celebration for the Chinese lunar New Year. The year 2020 is the year of the rat. The celebration included everything from festive food, to plays and dancing dragons and lions.
The Chinese New Year also market the launch of the Digital Intercultural Encounters, or DICE for short. DICe is a Digital leap project 2020-2021. We represent the Master’s program in Intercultural Encounters and our project provides digital teaching for the students of the master’s program.
We decided to launch our project during the lunar New Year, because it coincides with a part of our project. Our project will produce an educational video game, which has the player delve into one or two Asian annual festivals. Professor Xenia Zeiler is the creative head of this part of our project. One of these festivals may be the Chinese lunar New Year. We decided to take advantage of the festivities in Helsinki and collect photographic material that can be used in the game.
The idea is that the student can move around in the game and interact with different parts of their surroundings. These interactions will give the student information on the festival itself, as well as the wider cultural aspects and traditions that are associated with the festival.
The second part of our project focusses on a MOOC course for the students of the Intercultural Encounters (ICE) Master’s Program. The theme of the course is Migration. Our aim is to design a course that has a practical work life focus and allows the students to apply the theoretical knowledge ad expertise that they learn during their studies into practice. The MOOC course is planned for the academic year 2021.