Freshmen Orientation Program Using Minecraft: Designed by Students for Students during the Covid-19 Pandemic

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents experiences in designing a student-led virtual freshmen orientation program that uses a Minecraft environment. We describe the planning process, roles of the organizing committee members, and how the game was constructed for participants to learn and interact with one another. The student organizers not only created a virtual environment that scales the college map where more than a hundred freshmen (participants) could have an immersive experience of the campus, but also ensured the branding and marketing, logistics, and safety/well-being aspects of the event. In this paper, we present students' experience of this program from both the designers' as well as the participants' perspectives. We conducted surveys with the organizing committee members and interviewed the participants to gain insights on their perception of this event. Our analysis showed that student organizers had the autonomy to brainstorm, suggest creative ideas, develop novel games, and procure materials. They also felt that they developed authentic programming and leadership skills. On the other hand, participants felt engaged as the event was well-organized, had clear delivery of information, introduced them to new technology, made them more familiar with the campus, provided a conducive environment to hone their soft skills such as communication and teamwork even before they officially enrolled as undergraduate students in an engineering program, and helped them establish social networks to support them throughout their undergraduate education journey.