The University of Hawaiʻi Center on Disability Studies (CDS) in the College of Education and UH Esports teamed up to host their third annual “Level Up Mānoa!” summer training intensive. Designed for students with and without disabilities to participate together, the Esports camp hosted 11 students and four student mentors from Leeward Community College, UH West Oʻahu, UH Mānoa and Syracuse University. For four days in July, students engaged with competitive gaming, emerging technologies, and developed their self determination and technical skills.
This year’s sessions centered around using AI in game development. Students brainstormed their own video game ideas using Google Gemini and then brought those ideas to life using a game development platform called Tesana.ai to produce working video games. Tesana sponsored pro accounts for students to use during the camp.
Moshe Karabelnik, the camp’s co-lead, describes a situation where collaborating students couldn’t choose between a racing or photography theme. “Their efforts to mold these ideas into a single prompt (for the Gemini AI generator) forced the model to be creative, and the end result was a racing game with an element of taking photos built into it.”
Lasting Impacts
Level Up Mānoa! offers a hands-on environment for students to practice self-determination and the everyday skills of adult and college life, as well as socialize and build connections around shared interests. Esports, gaming and emerging technologies provide ways for students to build on their existing interests and passions while developing new technical skills and exploring interests in STEM-related fields.
“We have seen students join on-campus gaming clubs and create connections with the community on their campus,” camp co-lead Albert Yee said. “After Level Up Mānoa!, one participant used the game he created during camp to apply for the Good Jobs Hawaiʻi Game Development course. He was accepted and will be working with other indie/student game developers and world-class game artists in the fall.”
“The importance comes from the unique partnership forged on campus,” said Sky Kauweloa, director of UH Esports. “CDS and UH Esports fulfill a mission of access and engagement through emerging technologies, video games, and creative media for students at UH.”
Kauweloa looks forward to seeing Level Up Mānoa! continue to grow and was excited to see a Level Up Mānoa! participant registered for his SOCS 489 Game Development class this fall.
Level Up Mānoa! is coordinated by the Postsecondary Support Project and the Pacific Technical Assistance Center on Transition, in partnership with UH Esports. The program is supported through the U.S. Department of Education’s Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities, as well as Hawaiʻi‘s Division of Developmental Disabilities and Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.
This year, students from Syracuse University participated through the Inclusive Postsecondary Education Bridge, a national partnership among UH, Syracuse University’s Lawrence B. Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education, and the University of Missouri–St. Louis Office of Inclusive Higher Education.
Visit the UH Esports team’s Instagram and Discord for more information. More stories on UH’s Esports program.
