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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Mark Poepsel, assistant professor of mass communications in the College of Arts and Sciences, is constantly looking for innovative ways to teach students and provide experiential learning in a rapidly changing field.

Keeping with the 21^st century mindset of ‘there’s an app for that,’ Poepsel dreamed up an app through which his mass communications students could take a portion of their final exam. With the help of Dennis Bouvier, chair of the Department of Computer Science in the SIUE School of Engineering, three senior computer science students were recruited to make Poepsel’s dream a reality.

Together Poepsel and students Jeff Augustine, Gage Hugo and Erik Neeley created AR (Alternative Reality) Exam, a fully functioning iOS app that allows students to use an iPad to complete multiple practical tasks.

“This is not to say that written exams are not worthwhile,” said Poepsel. “Three-fourths of the final is written. The point of using AR Exam for one-fourth of the final is to have the students perform media-related tasks in real time during an exam setting. It’s extremely important that students in mass communications figure out how to manage technology strategically, and this is a way of doing that.”

Using the app, students will complete tasks that emphasize each of the professional areas of interest within mass communications, including advertising, journalism, corporate communications and television/radio production. Like the show “The Amazing Race,” once students successfully complete a task, the app will allow them to move to the next assignment.

“Students will recite the First Amendment, then participate in a trivia game where they’ll have to answer 10 questions,” explained Poepsel. “Once they get all 10 correct, they will move on to conduct a product photo shoot where they’ll write a slogan – much like a snap on Snapchat. You could call it an ‘adsnap’.

“Then they will record a brief interview with a fake public information officer from which they’ll pull a 15-second sound bite. The last step is to read a news article from that day and evaluate the credibility of the message and sources, and comment on the overall writing quality.”

The innovative interdisciplinary project ties into the University’s mission to provide an innovative and experiential academic experience.

“Students majoring in computer science complete a senior project that is intended to be a real-world software development experience,” Bouvier said. “These students worked closely with their client to determine the requirements for the project, design the product, build and test the product.”

The creation of the app involved one semester of planning and one semester of implementation. Augustine, Hugo and Neeley agreed this project was reflective of what they will encounter in the professional working environment. Upon their December graduation, all three have accepted positions as software developers in the St. Louis region.

“This project allowed us to gain experience with multiple platforms, including a client-side product, a server backend and the network layer in between,” the students added. “Our project has the potential to make a difference in the mass communications students’ curriculum and sets a strong precedent for future inter-departmental collaborative projects at SIUE.”

Poepsel concludes that AR Exam is a starting point for future academic scholarship.

“In terms of practical application and pedagogy, it truly makes sense for us to talk to people in computer science, because information and communications technologies are probably going to follow what computer scientists develop for the foreseeable future,” Poepsel said. “There’s only social shaping of technology if users get involved and tell designers what they want the tech to do.”

AR Exam creators Jeff Augustine, Gage Hugo and Erik Neeley will graduate from SIUE in December.