In January, the college communications office interviewed me about my new music appreciation course on the history of video game music. It was great to talk about the new course, and the photoshoot was especially fun--I even got a new profile picture out of it. We spent a long time trying to get those shots of games being projected on my face. Super Nintendo games turn out to have the best color palettes for that...
Sunderman Prof. O'Hara Pioneers Video Game Music Course
The course itself is going really well - I ended up with twice as many students as I anticipated. Moderating discussion among a mixed group of majors and non-majors is a new challenge, but I've found that it's easy to get students to come out of their shells when the conversation turns to personal experiences and memories, and that preliminary discussion in mixed small groups (in a "Think-Pair-Share" kind of thing) can lead to really excellent class discussions.