COVID Pivot Turned Me Into the Cosplay Professor

On March 13 we all left MU for spring break assuming we would be back on campus on March 23. Now it is May, and other than going to grab some essentials from my office, I have not been back on campus. The last 8 weeks of my face to face classes have been online. It has been a strange time.

It was during spring break that it was announced we would not be coming back. This was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand it gave me a week to figure out how to change my face to face classroom activities into online facsimiles. When it came time to record the first video I thought I'd dress up in my aloha dress and take the students to O'ahu, I figured we could all use a little chuckle as I welcomed them from the beach.

I realized I had a lot more fun pretending to be somewhere other than my spare bedroom for this remote lecture time, and thus turned to my old friend cosplay! When I was in high school and college, I used to go to Star Trek conventions, regularly, in full costume and hang with other friends in full costume! This was before the term cosplay was commonplace (yes I'm older than I look!). I started to think, how could I incorporate my geeky love into something that would be surprising and engaging. I analyzed my topics and tried to think about them as into what fandom lore would they fit?

For my microbiology course I came up with:

• Defense Against the Dark Microbes (Antimicrobial take on Harry Potter)
• We have a 2319!! (Pathogenicity in the world of Monsters Inc.)
• Romulan Cold (Virulence of a Star Trek ailment)
• Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff (Epidemiology as in Dr. Who)
• Innate and Adaptive Defense Training (Immunology at SHIELD Headquarters in the MCU)
• The Dark Side (Autoimmune Disorders in the world of Star Wars)
• Immune Lab Tests at "home" (this one did not have a popular fandom but instead I used a background from our campus and made it MU focused)
• Welcome Microbiology Fans! I'm a Realistic Fish Head (Applied Microbiology from Bikini Bottom)

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For cellular biology I did video series with each short video covering a single learning objective. I kept the same theme for each series and we did:

• Protein targeting at Hogwarts
• Signal transduction with the Amoeba Sisters
• Gene expression at Starfleet Academy
• The most magical process in the cell (replication) from Disneyland
• Cellular life and death from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
• Cellular differentiation from MU's campus

I got more excited and into staging, creating, and editing the videos as the semester went on. I started adding background sound effects and music. I tried, whenever possible, to create discussion threads based upon the theme to encourage students to apply the knowledge from the videos. And whenever I answered their discussion posts, I stayed in character and used gifs from that fandom. The biggest takeaway I have from this experience is be ALL IN. If you're having fun, students will have fun!

You might be wondering how long did this take for each lecture?! It was about 1 - 2 hours of work time. I wanted to get record in a single take, without having to create a script because I teach organically and wanted that same feel to these videos, so there were a few times I messed up and had to restart the video. Once the video was recorded I would trim it and add some background sound effects or music to enhance the ambiance.

What I used:

• Zoom - record lecture to take advantage of virtual backgrounds
• Microsoft Photo Video Editor - I have a PC and this was readily available, free, and not to big of a learning curve. I would use it to trim my videos and overlay different sound effects and/or scores.
• YouTube - I uploaded my videos to YouTube as unlisted so I could link them easily.
• Technology - I had a wireless USB lapel mic, a web cam that was mountable on a tripod, and a green screen.
• Costuming - The only thing I bought was the fish head, everything else was taking items already in the house and fashioning them so that they fit in with the cosplay.