{"id":20348,"date":"2026-04-03T11:46:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T16:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/?page_id=20348"},"modified":"2026-04-03T12:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:50:08","slug":"nick-hwang","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wisconsin-teaching-fellows-scholars-program\/2026-27-wisconsin-teaching-fellows-scholars-2\/nick-hwang\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Hwang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t\t
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UW-Whitewater<\/h3>\n

Associate Professor
\n<\/em><\/strong>Communication \/ Media Arts and Game Development<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick Hwang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media Arts and Game Development at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Whitewater. His research sits at the intersection of networked musical performance, audience participation, and human-computer interaction. Drawing on practice-based inquiry and systems design, Dr. Hwang explores two interrelated strands: (1) how open-source, browser-based frameworks can enable real-time collaborative performance across distributed participants; and (2) how reflective and metacognitive practices can deepen learning in creative technology courses. His creative work and research have been presented internationally, with scholarship appearing in Computer Music Journal and a Best Paper Award at the International Computer Music Conference in 2024. As the creator of Collab-Hub.io \u2014 a networking framework for participatory music performance \u2014 and co-founder of Lyrai, an AI acoustics startup developed through NSF I-Corps, he brings active research into sustained dialogue with his teaching practice. Dr. Hwang has designed and taught undergraduate courses in game development, electronic music, and creative coding.<\/p>\n

Teaching and Learning Philosophy<\/strong><\/h6>\n

My teaching is grounded in the belief that creative and technical learning is most meaningful when students understand not just how to make something, but why their choices matter \u2014 and what those choices reveal about how they think. In courses on game development, electronic music, and creative coding, I design learning environments in which students are agents of inquiry rather than recipients of procedures. Project-based structures, open prompts, and student-driven exploration are not accommodations to the subject matter; they are a response to what it actually means to work in fields where tools evolve rapidly, and right answers are rarely given in advance.
\nReflection is central to my practice. I ask students to articulate their decisions throughout the making process \u2014 not as a documentation requirement, but as a learning mechanism. These reflective touchpoints create productive distance between doing and understanding, surface assumptions that would otherwise remain invisible, and build the metacognitive awareness that transfers across disciplines and careers.
\nMy main teaching objectives are:<\/p>\n