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WVU Grad Wins Best ETD Award
West Virginia University master's graduate Tim Broadwater has been declared one of the winners of the "Innovative ETD Award" in an international competition presented by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), a consortium of over 200 Universities worldwide.
According to NDLTD Board member and WVU ETD Program Coordinator John H. Hagen,
"Electronic theses and dissertations submitted for this award represent student efforts to transform the genre of the print dissertation through the use of ETDs. This award recognizes innovative use of software to create "cutting edge" ETDs. Use of renderings, photos and other multimedia objects that are included in the document were considered as part of the innovation of the work. The award includes a $400 cash prize (sponsored by Adobe, Inc.) and an honorable mention at the ETD 2006 Symposium, to be held this year at Laval University, Quebec, Canada, June 7th - 10th. We are very proud that a WVU Alum has again received this considerable recognition; during the past two years WVU graduates Hilary Attfield and Rachel Gurvitch received this award."
Broadwater, a graduate of the WVU College of Creative Arts, developed a multimedia thesis which displays a virtual exhibit of art and fairytale themes, presented as an interactive video game.
His thesis entitled www.Didartic.com: Activating the Didactic, Self-Reflective Fairytale through Hypermedia As a Model for the Art Education Activist explores new approaches to art education. The struggle for meaning, reflection, and self-understanding is an important process of human development. Throughout human history didactic art – art wherein the central purpose is to instruct the viewer - has been developed to aid this human function. Focusing primarily on the didactic art of fairytales, however, one can see that the dominant role of reflection and self-understanding is lost in contemporary translation. The role of the viewer/reader of the fairytale, contemporarily, has been switched from one of inner reflection to that of passive absorption. This thesis project argues that reflection and self-understanding (on the part of the viewer) can best be restored to the fairytale through the use of hypermedia, as well as the artist adopting an art-activist approach to art production.
Access to Broadwater's electronic thesis is available online at:
https://eidr.wvu.edu/etd/documentdata.eTD?documentid=4350Other winners of the ETD 2006 Awards program are listed at http://www.ndltd.org/awards/awards2006.
WVU was the 2nd institution in the world to require ETD submission in 1998. WVU graduate research is now are accessed on the Web millions of times per year by academia, industry, government and the public from over 100 countries worldwide. ETDs are part of a growing trend of technological development that is transforming economies by providing access to research results to the world while bringing reciprocal investment back to the local level.
For more information contact John Hagen at (304) 293-4040, ext. 4025 or see www.wvu.edu/~thesis.
23 May 2006 / Morgantown, WV