Bridgewater, Va. – Every year, the Bridgewater College Digital Scholarship Gurus have hosted a week long event that advertises the tools that they provide to help students.  

The Digital Scholarship Gurus are BC students who are trained to help educate their fellow peers through digital media strategies.

Guru Kylee Lorio, a junior, described the DSGs as “an offshoot of IT that focuses on digital platforms.” 

This academic year, due to COVID-19, the Gurus were challenged with making this design week event accessible and safe for all students no matter where or how they chose to learn this semester. 

DSG Coordinator Holden Andrews ‘20, a current master’s student in digital media strategies, described the event as a showcase of how the gurus can help students as well as a way to provide students with daily activities that are engaging and fun. 

The week started with a painting session where students were able to get together and express their artistic talents in a socially distant form. Participants had the choice of joining the painting session in person or through zoom.

Some other interactive events that the gurus incorporated into the week included a virtual escape room and a treasure hunt on the DSG website. Both of these virtual events gave participants an opportunity to win a prize. 

Another interactive event, known as the design sprint, taught attendees how to create ideas for apps or websites. Using the four I’s — inspiration, ideation, implementation and implication — to turn nothing into something. 

The gurus used a random object generator during the inspiration phase and selected three objects that would be used as the base inspiration for creating an idea and name during the ideation phase. 

Implementation is the phase where the actual design and layout of the app is considered. The last design phase, implication, determines who would benefit from the designed app. 

“I think the gurus design techniques were really interesting,” said junior Tyler Lynn.“I’d probably use them in the future.”

Design techniques that the gurus teach are beneficial to students who will design websites in their future. They also provide help to students creating a website for a class.

“I wish I had known I could get help from them, they could have been a great resource in making a website for the Showker competition,” said junior Jared Browne.

The DSGs can help with any type of digital media project or program. Students can schedule an appointment during the week through email or drop by the Learning and Research Services Suite in the Forrer Learning Commons.