Shane Tilton, ONU Associate Professor of Writing and Multimedia Studies, was honored twice during the 109th annual conference of the National Communication Association (NCA) for his scholarship in the field of game studies and human communication & technology.

Dr. Tilton was awarded the Top Paper for Innovative Presentation Design during the Game Studies' Preconference session in November 2023. "Bumping the Stats: A pilot study of the impact of TTRPGs on the emotional grounding and psychological well-being of gamers" was a paper co-written by Tilton, Anthony Bean (Framingham State University), and Joe Locante (Texas Christian University) on a pilot study that used eight different psychological instruments to determine if playing face-to-face a tabletop role-playing game could address anxiety, depression, and other aspects of college students' mental health.

The Human Communication and Technology interest division honored Dr. Tilton  with their Top Book Award for "Meme Life: The social, cultural, and psychological aspects of memetic communication." The award committee noted the interdisciplinary nature of the work as one of the main reasons for their selection of the book for this honor.