New Initiatives: Socioemotional Learning
Our team is working on a new initiative using cross-media to promote socioemotional learning (SEL). Socioemotional learning stresses the importance of integrating social, emotional, behavioral, and character skills to serve both academic learning and social development. This approach has been proven to be highly correlated with students’ overall development, academic learning, and future success. Schools and researchers around the world are looking for effective socioemotional learning programs.
The very nature of storytelling often highlights many components that are essential to SEL, and thus, we aspire to conduct research to better understand children’s socioemotional development. We intend to examine their responses to cross-media materials adapted from popular films and novels. Moreover, through careful program design, we aim to explore the power of cross-media materials in promoting socioemotional learning through either formal education, such as in a classroom directed by teachers, or in an informal learning environment, such as an online forum or educational gaming. We intend to transform such bold aspirations into reality by incorporating our past experiences into our cross-media work in promoting educational, aesthetic, and ethical awareness by leveraging the power of technology.