The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of David Hopping as a new visiting lecturer. He was most recently employed as an adjunct lecturer with the iSchool and Illinois Informatics Institute at the University of Illinois.
Hopping's research interests include intergenerational community informatics, digital inclusion and digital literacy, relational sociology, and sociological theory. Prior to attending graduate school, he developed and maintained business software applications for clients in the San Francisco Bay area. According to Hopping, his fascination with the socio-cultural aspects of the systems he designed led him to pursue an advanced degree in social psychology.
Hopping earned his PhD in sociology from Illinois and was a visiting assistant professor in the Sociology Department from 2003 to 2006. He was recruited to the not-for-profit community development organization Generations of Hope and served as the organization's executive managing director from 2006 to 2015 and as executive director in 2016.
"A part of what I bring to my teaching at the iSchool arises from my work at Generations of Hope," Hopping said. "This unique program—which I had studied closely as part of my dissertation research—was designed to support families who were adopting children from the foster-care system by embedding them within an intentional intergenerational neighborhood through an innovative merger with retirement housing."
"Recently, I have been researching and exploring the potential for using biofeedback and gaming technologies to enhance human capabilities and to mitigate vulnerabilities such as learning disabilities or post-traumatic stress. Ultimately, I’d like to merge this with my previous work on intergenerational social networks as 'potentiators' of socio-emotional resilience, to augment carefully designed spaces of interaction in ways that promote bonding, learning, and playful engagement across generations."
At the iSchool, Hopping has taught Web Technologies and Techniques (IS 390 W1A) and developed a new course, Web Content Strategy and Management (IS 590 WDO), which will be offered this fall.