[Air-L] what should an introductory course cover in such a fast-changing field?

[Umar Ruhi]

Hi Tery,

Last year, I helped in the development of a similar course.

Based on your description, I gather that your course is geared towards
“creating” and “accessing” digital media. If that’s the case, then the
skills-based components you’ve outlined make a lot of sense. The only
additions I would make are: i) include a blogging component, either in
an individual or a group context; and ii) include a content feeds
(e.g. RSS) component.

If you want ideas other than “creating” and “accessing” digital media,
you can introduce “analyzing” and “evaluating” digital media as well.
These dimensions will allow you to incorporate more skills-based
components such as providing an overview of website and social media
analytics (using tools such as google analytics), and also touch upon
the media that you’ve deliberately excluded (microblogging, and
virtual worlds) by way of asking students to perform short critical
reviews and assessments.

I understand if these dimensions are beyond the expectations in a
first-year course. The course that I’ve based my suggestions on was a
second-year course.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Umar Ruhi


Umar Ruhi,
Assistant Professor, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa
Management Consultant, Web/Enterprise 2.0
Website: http://www.umar.biz
Email: umar at umar.biz


> Message: 10
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:37:31 -0400
> From: Tery G <teryg93 at gmail.com>
> To: Air-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: [Air-L] what should an introductory course cover in such a
>        fast-changing field?
> Message-ID:
>        <AANLkTimEdzCXXs+6SUn+wJY_0or+_ykJhFqqULyNMqGE at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi all,
>
> I asked a while back about acceptable resources for one of my classes. I've
> heard offline from a few people who are currently designing courses similar
> to mine, and who asked what I covered. We thought that might be an
> interesting question to ask on this list.
>
> Background on my course: I teach in a Media Arts department and the class is
> called Digital Media Literacy. I designed it years ago, and I could not find
> a single model for it, so it would be especially interesting for me to hear
> now what people do or would do in this type of course.
>
> The course is designed to introduce our freshmen to both the concepts and
> some of the tools we use to create digital media (so it's a 100-level
> course). Some of the class is spent on tools, currently Audacity for sound,
> Photoshop for images, Quicktime for video, and Keynote for presentations. I
> introduce them to at least three browsers, so they stop thinking IE *is* the
> web. There are a handful of other utilities that we use: file transfer
> programs, SnapZPro, etc. We do a quick history of the internet and of the
> web (including the internet gift economy, though it barely exists anymore).
> We cover file compression, types of compression, and when and why they need
> to compress files.
>
> The more I read about search engines, the more I want them to understand
> about these tools that they use to gather the information they use to live
> their lives, let alone write their papers. So, we cover search engines in
> general, and Google in particular. Then we use the library databases. I'm
> still following the controversy about whether and how PowerPoint affects the
> way we think, so we read and talk about that. We look at copyright issues
> and Creative Commons licensing. We look at net neutrality. I'm probably
> forgetting something; I don't have my syllabus in front of me right now.
>
> I've been staying away from things that seem trendy to me, and that I have
> not been able to see academic value to, like Twitter and Second Life. I
> included each once, but didn't get enough out of it and you can't include
> everything . . .
>
> Their final project is a multimedia presentation on a topic of their choice,
> as long as it's related to digital media or media arts. They critique each
> other's presentations as they build them, so this is a sneaky way of working
> in more material while also giving them more practice with the tools we've
> covered all semester.
>
> So the question from me, and some others on the list, is -- if you were
> designing this type of course, what would you put in?
>
> Best,
> Tery Griffin
>