Esports and Gaming on Your College Campus: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion infused from Day 1
Length of Presentation
50 minutes
Start Date
15-10-2021 1:00 PM
End Date
15-10-2021 1:50 PM
Document Type
Presentation
Abstract
Esports is here. Collegiate esports is here. Everyone can play video games. While these are all true, in principle, we know that the reality is that not everyone can play video games. At any level, but for our purposes at the collegiate level, often times our students who have been historically marginalized do not get the same access to resources than your “traditional” gamer. As educators, it’s our job to ensure equal opportunity for all of our students. Now more than ever, when more and more universities are onboarding esports as an officially sanctioned program, we must be proactive and intentional in building our communities and programs for gamers. With a thoughtful and critical approach, we will leave out our underserved population of gamers. This presentation will outline what esports is and how we can approach building a program that is inclusive for all.
Description
The purpose of this presentation is to inform and demonstrate how educators and administrators can approach esports and gaming on their college campuses. With esports on the rise across America and specifically Illinois, now is an incredible time to pursue esports and gaming at your institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly helped shine a spotlight on the benefits that virtual programming can do for your social capital on campus. While engaging in esports and gaming is an exciting undertaking, we must be mindful of our underserved populations as they often get excluded in traditional program building. Esports and gaming have inherent barriers already, so it’s important to carefully and critically examine our approaches to inviting esports and gaming onto our campuses so that everyone can reap the benefits, especially our historically marginalized folks who would not normally feel comfortable engaging in our programming had intentional thought and planning not been involved. Throughout this presentation, you will hear best practices when starting a new program, what to do if you already have a program, and common pitfalls to avoid. DEI should be part of the conversation at every step of the process and this presentation will tell you just how to do that.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Esports and Gaming on Your College Campus: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion infused from Day 1
Esports is here. Collegiate esports is here. Everyone can play video games. While these are all true, in principle, we know that the reality is that not everyone can play video games. At any level, but for our purposes at the collegiate level, often times our students who have been historically marginalized do not get the same access to resources than your “traditional” gamer. As educators, it’s our job to ensure equal opportunity for all of our students. Now more than ever, when more and more universities are onboarding esports as an officially sanctioned program, we must be proactive and intentional in building our communities and programs for gamers. With a thoughtful and critical approach, we will leave out our underserved population of gamers. This presentation will outline what esports is and how we can approach building a program that is inclusive for all.
Speaker Information
Jack Blahnik currently works for Illinois State University and serves as the Esports Graduate Assistant for Campus Recreation. Graduating in 2019 with a degree in Criminal Justice Sciences, he is currently pursuing his masters in Recreation Administration. Jack’s focus is on collegiate esports and how to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion are built into every club and program.