What is the Phoenix Futurama? It’s a trivia contest tied to the future of information and communication technologies. Nearly 90 students from four different winter term courses with communications themes and a futures focus gathered together Jan. 22 to enjoy competing in this test of their knowledge.
Faculty and their participating courses included Mandy Gallagher – Communications in a Global Age; Glenn Scott – Sports and Media; Ken Calhoun – Interactive Media; Janna Anderson – Futures Studies, Mapping Global Futures.
The Futurama was one of five different themed sessions that make up the Emerging Futures Forum, a series of Winter Term events that bring together groups of faculty and students who have been focusing on similar futures topics.
The more than 300 students and 17 faculty members who are participating in the forum in 2009 are exploring Elon University’s Winter Term theme “Emerging Futures: Foresight for Global Good.” This January Elon is offering 40 courses with an emerging futures focus in which students are encouraged to experiment, imagine, improvise and pursue the paradigm shifts occurring on a global scale. The Emerging Futures Forum allows faculty and students to share their knowledge in new ways.
Students participating in the Future of Information Phoenix Futurama worked in advance to generate question sets and study guides tied to their areas of study. The various class groups were broken into mixed teams and all students worked to coach their teammates in a wisdom session in preparation for the trivia contest. The eight teams participating were named for futures-vision films and TV shows and fictional characters including The Terminators, The AI, The Borg, The Heroes and The Precogs.
All students on each team had to answer all questions asked in the trivia quiz. Winning teams moved on to succeeding rounds while the first teams that washed out entered a consolation round in which all students took a Blackboard-based quiz to see who would come back to be invited to a final battle.
The competition scorecard was projected in a lively interactive graphic on a large screen in Oaks 212. Calhoun served as the quiz show host.
In the final battle of the three-hour competition, the Terminators narrowly defeated The Heroes. They won the honor of choosing a charity to which a $100 donation will be awarded. They chose to give the donation to Loaves and Fishes, the local food pantry.
