Program Details : University Catalogs : University of Minnesota

JOUR 1501 - Digital Games and Society (AH, TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

Digital games have a wide-ranging impact on our culture and society and are one of the fastest-growing sectors of the entertainment media industry, generating enormous profits for the game companies. In this course, you will: (1) be introduced to the academic study of video games; (2) examine digital games as forms of communication and interactive storytelling, as well as games of entertainment, commerce, social activism, professional training, and education; (3) consider the impact of mobile media, particularly for games and gameplay; (4) discuss next-generation virtual reality technology that may change the way we think about immersive media experiences; and (5) study the history, ethics, and socio-cultural impact of digital games and related technologies.

JOUR 3551 - The Business of Digital Media: Innovation, Disruption, and Adaptation (TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Digital media enterprises have uprooted many established industries and continue to be among the most important factors shaping our economy and society today. Where do these innovations come from? Why do some startups prosper while others fail? How do legacy firms respond to disruptions to their business models? What makes adaptations possible? What makes them risky? Learn to analyze and evaluate the economic strategies of existing digital media firms across various sectors of society including news, entertainment, social media, mobile, and retail. Assess their impacts on cultural and civic life for better and for worse. Use these skills to incubate your own ideas for the next great media innovations of the future.

JOUR 3552 - Technology, Communication & Global Society (GP)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall

This course examines the various ways in which technology continues to evolve, and to have a role in ongoing societal changes. The course focuses on unpacking the specific ways in which technology are evolving, and connecting those changes to impacts on communication and media A variety of theories or perspectives relevant or related to technology use and global communication will be considered to help make sense of the interplay between the technology use and societies in a global setting. The course is divided into three main parts: first, understanding of the specifics of relevant technology; second, connecting the technical features to theoretical views of technology; third, examining global patterns of technology use in media and communication. The readings and discussions place special emphasis on specific forms of technology, including mobile phones, Web, and social media. Grounded in a global context, we will investigate the political, cultural, social, technological, and economic conditions that shape and are shaped by the presence of the Internet at the national and cross-national levels; the effects of technology use on the form and content of mass communication at the global level; and the implications of technology use for human and social relations across national borders.

JOUR 4272 - Digital Advertising: Theory and Practice

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Spring

This course introduces you to the fascinating and ever-changing world of digital advertising and marketing. Learn its history and evolution, current trends, future possibilities, and legal/ethical issues. We'll study the innovative research and theories explaining the practice and effects of various forms, including social media, search marketing, gaming, native, viral, online video advertising, online behavioral advertising, and mobile. Through a combination of lectures, in-class discussions, and guest presentations by industry professionals, you'll learn the basic theories for developing effective and socially-responsible digital advertising campaigns in the increasingly diverse and global media environment.

JOUR 3751 - Digital Media and Culture (AH, TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall, Spring & Summer

How have digital media innovations like social media, mobile phones, artificial intelligence, drones and games shaped and been shaped by a culture and society globally? Learn to critically examine the function of digital media in your life. Take away a socio-historical understanding of digital media innovation, and the social, political, and economical impact of new media in creativity, industry, and culture from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Topics range from the concept of branding in an online context, to the varied uses of digital media in the context of journalism, social mobilization, law and privacy, business, globalization, content creation, and beyond. You will read, discuss, and debate cutting edge material from documentaries, podcasts, popular press, and academic literature. This course balances local contexts with global perspectives, and provides details into the practicalities of working and living in a new media environment.

JOUR 5501 - Communication, Public Opinion, and Social Media

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Sharpen your understanding of public opinion and its role in political and civic life: What does it mean? Where does it come from? How is it measured? What impact does it have? How are the public's preferences shaped by the larger communications environment and the strategic messages of politicians, interest groups, and other actors in society? What are polls really measuring, and why do they seem so unreliable sometimes? How are social media technologies giving voice to new segments and dimensions of public opinion? But how are they vulnerable to manipulation from bots and other efforts designed to alter perceptions of collective opinions? Examine the theories of communication, psychology, political science, and sociology that underlie these dynamic questions. We?ll consider cutting edge approaches used by market researchers, political analysts, and data scientists to harness new forms of data about what the public thinks. We investigate theories that explain how people form their opinions, deliberate with others, change their minds, and reveal their preferences, and we apply these frameworks to understand contemporary public opinion issues and campaigns.

COMM 3211 - Introduction to Media Studies

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall, Spring & Summer

Historical development and current issues in electronic media technologies and programming. Effects of governmental, industrial, and public organizations on message content. Problem areas of electronic media.

COMM 4291 - New Telecommunication Media

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall

Development and current status of new telecommunication media such as cable TV, satellites, DBS, MDS, and video disk/cassettes. Technology, historical development, regulation, and programming of these media and their influence on individuals, organizations, and society. prereq: 3211 or instr consent

COMM 5231 - Media Outlaws

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Fall Even Year

People working outside of mainstream media institutions who find creative/provocative ways to use media as space for cultural, political, or economic critique/resistance.

CSCI 3921W - Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing (CIV, WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Impact of computers on society. Computer science perspective of ethical, legal, social, philosophical, political, and economic aspects of computing. prereq: At least soph or instr consent

CSCL 3221 - On Television (CIV)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	CSCL 3221/SCMC 3221
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

We will study writings on television and specific TV shows from a variety of angles to understand the rise of American broadcast technologies, how race and class are crafted on TV, representations of gender and the home, postmodernity and late capitalism, the rise and demise and of taste, global television and the public sphere, the production of ?reality? in our present historical moment, and changes in televisual technologies. Throughout the course, we will also consider what constitutes television?the technology, the form, and the content?and learn to read these three facets of it concurrently.

CSCL 3334 - Monsters, Robots, Cyborgs (LITR)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

Historical/critical reading of figures (e.g., uncanny double, monstrous aberration, technological hybrid) in mythology, literature, and film, from classical epic to sci-fi, cyberpunk, and Web. (previously 3461)

DES 3131 - User Experience in Design

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Introduction to theories/principles of human interaction with designed objects. Focuses on affect/emotional quality of designs. Objects, interfaces, environments. Digitally mediated experiences.

DES 3141 - Technology, Design, and Society (TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Explore/evaluate impact of technology/design on humans, societies. How design innovation shapes cultures. How people use technology to shape design, adoption, use of designed products/environments through consumerism/ethical values.

GLOS 3143 - Place, Community, Culture (CIV)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Students in the Global Studies program study not only the powerful political institutions and economic processes that shape our world, they also acquire the skills to perceive and investigate their own place and identities, and to interpret creative work that express different ways of being. In GLOS 3143 'Place, Community, Culture' students will explore their own locations, identities, and experiences in the context of our fraught and ethically complex times. The emphasis is on practice, on seeing one's own life as something to be enriched by seeing and feeling the world in new ways. Students will encounter a mix of philosophical works, artistic texts (novels, films, poetry, painting, music, and other forms of media) and scholarly texts that together will help students expand their ingrained and conditioned ways of seeing the world. Class themes might include self and other, community and alienation, place and placelessness, home and homelessness. Students will examine the place of ethics and politics in the negotiation of their identities and experiences. Assignments might include essays that ask students to interpret artistic works that present different avenues of insight, or creative assignments that ask you to reflect on your own experiences in relation to course readings and themes. Students will conclude the class more confident of their ability to notice and negotiate the dilemmas they will encounter in their personal and professional lives.

GLOS 4221 - Globalize This! Understanding Globalization Through Sociology (GP)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	GloS 4221/Soc 4321
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall

From the city streets of Bangalore to the high plateaus of La Paz to the trading floors of New York City, people from around the world are becoming increasingly interdependent, creating new and revitalizing old forms of power and opportunity, exploitation and politics, social organizing and social justice. This course offers an overview of the processes that are forcing and encouraging people?s lives to intertwine economically, politically, and culturally. prereq: Soc majors/minors must register A-F

HSCI 3331 - Technology and American Culture (HIS, TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	HSci 3331/5331
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

American culture(s) and technology, pre-Columbian times to present. Artisanal, biological, chemical, communications, energy, environment, electronic, industrial, military, space and transportation technologies explained in terms of economic, social, political and scientific causes/effects.

HSCI 3715 - History of Modern Technology: Waterwheels to the Web (HIS, TS)

Credits:	3.0 -4.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies:	HSci 1715/3715
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

This course explores the many technological systems that have come to span our globe, alongside the widespread persistence of traditional technologies. We start with the earliest glimmerings of modernity and industrialization, and move on in time to the building of global technological networks. How have people changed their worlds through technologies like steam engines and electronics? Is it a paradox that many traditional agricultural and household technologies have persisted? How have technologies of war remade the global landscape? We ask how business and government have affected technological entrepreneurs, from railroads to technologies of global finance. We end by considering the tension between technologies that threaten our global environment and technologies that offer us hopes of a new world.

SCMC 3001W - History of Cinema and Media Culture (WI)

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Genealogy of cinema in relation to other media, notably photography, radio, television/video, and the Internet. Representative films from decisive moments in global development of cinema. Rise/fall of Hollywood studio system, establishment of different national cinemas, cinematic challenges to cultural imperialism, emergence of post-cinematic technologies.

SCMC 3201 - Fundamentals of Digital Filmmaking

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Practice of digital filmmaking. Digital techniques, practical tools required to produce films. Optical/digital devices as artistic tools. Historical/theoretical issues of cinema, its relation to other art forms.

SCMC 3202 - Intermediate Digital Filmmaking

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Students complete a film of any length, 24 frames or feature-length. Emphasizes formal analysis of frames, shots, sequences, and relations of unit (frame or shot) to whole. prereq: 3201 or instr consent

TH 4555 - Audio Technology

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall

Sound as science. Technology to create/manipulate sound. Recording techniques. Effects/signal processing. Microphone/mixing techniques. prereq: 1501 or instr consent

WRIT 3371W - Technology, Self, and Society (TS, WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Cultural history of American technology. Social values that technology represents in shifts from handicraft to mass production/consumption, in modern transportation, communication, bioengineering. Ethical issues in power, work, identity, our relation to nature.

WRIT 3381W - Writing and Modern Cultural Movements (AH, WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Fall

This course explores how written texts help to shape modern art and cultural movements. Writ 3381 first develops an understanding of the manifesto form by reading primary examples written by artists from such movements as Cubism and Expressionism. Students study the complex written and visual strategies of those texts and how they contributed to social and political change in the modern world. Out of those attempts to change culture, students will be challenged to consider how particular writing strategies developed in the U.S. aimed at bringing about change in 1960s culture in areas such as the women's movement, the move toward racial equality, and the environmental movement. Toward the end of the course, the writings of current movements are taken up as building on and departing from past writing and rhetorical strategies. Students both read about and practice writing strategies studied in the course.

WRIT 3577W - Rhetoric, Technology, and the Internet (TS, WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

This course examines the rich and complex ways people are seeking to inform and persuade others via the internet. Western rhetorical theories have adapted to address spoken, written, visual, and digital communication. The internet incorporates aspects of all of these modes of communication, but it also requires us to revisit how we have understood them. Students in Rhetoric, Technology, and the Internet will reinforce their understandings of rhetorical theories and the internet as a technology. The class will also ask students to read current scholarly work about the internet, and develop the critical tools needed to complement, extend, or challenge that work.

WRIT 4501 - Usability and Human Factors in Technical Communication

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Writ 4501/Writ 5501
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

Usability is concerned with how people interact with design and technology; usability is commonly known as the "ease of use" of products and technologies by a range of users. This course emphasizes usability and user research and will explore the intersection of usability and technical communication. We will investigate definitions of usability and user-centered design principles, and we will explore a variety of usability research methods including heuristic evaluation, personas, and usability testing. The course will focus heavily on usability testing of web sites, a common technical communication task that involves observation and interviews of human participants interacting with a web site.

WRIT 4662W - Writing With Digital Technologies (WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Writ 4662W/Writ 5662
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

WRIT 4662W is an advanced level Writing Studies course that explores various digital writing technologies and provides multiple opportunities to assess writing situations and make appropriate decisions about digital form and production. Students will learn the basic building blocks of writing in Internet environments (text, sound, images, video) as well as the vocabularies, functionalities, and organizing structures of Web 2.0 environments, how these impact understanding and use of information, and how to produce these environments (i.e., multimedia internet documents) for interactivity and use. This course includes design projects and practice with apps, markup language, content management systems, video, and social media. prereq: Jr or sr or instr consent

ARCH 3611 - Design in the Digital Age

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Arch 3611/Arch 5611
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Introduction to design, design process. Developing/understanding ways of seeing, thinking, and acting as a designer. Changes in design being wrought by digital technology. Team design project.

ARCH 5611 - Design in the Digital Age

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Arch 3611/Arch 5611
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Introduction to design, design process. Developing/understanding ways of seeing, thinking, and acting as a designer. Changes in design being wrought by digital technology. Team design project. prereq: Grad student or upper level undergrad student

ARTS 3760 - Experimental Film and Video

Credits:	4.0 [max 12.0]
Course Equivalencies:	ArtS 3760/ArtS 5760
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall & Spring

Experimental moving image practice is increasingly prevalent within contemporary art and cinema. This class is designed to heighten your awareness and experience of the variety of ways feeling and perception can be explored through moving images and sound. We will step beyond traditional narrative structures and conventions of camera use to explore the spiritual, conceptual, and emotional potential of the medium. There will be individual and collaborative group work on elements of film production - character design, location and scene design, writing, improvisational and scripted acting and shooting, camera and sound recording tools and techniques, editing, and post-production. The class will include screenings, readings and discussion of experimental films from the inception of the avant-garde through the most contemporary experimental work being produced today. You will explore the visual and aural experience of moving image and sound through a variety of alternative shooting, recording, editing and interdisciplinary installation and presentation options. Students begin the semester by developing a film concept and planning production. Working individually and collaboratively, you will then shoot the film and complete a preliminary edit. Through critiques and further editing and shooting, you will work, re-work, and start over with your material to discover unplanned changes in tone, flow, experience, and meaning. Students need to provide their own portable drive and 1-2 SD cards for each class, and may choose to purchase their own subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud if they wish to use their own computer. Prerequisite: ARTS 1704

ARTS 5760 - Experimental Film and Video

Credits:	4.0 [max 12.0]
Course Equivalencies:	ArtS 3760/ArtS 5760
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall & Spring

Experimental moving image practice is increasingly prevalent within contemporary art and cinema. This class is designed to heighten your awareness and experience of the variety of ways feeling and perception can be explored through moving images and sound. We will step beyond traditional narrative structures and conventions of camera use to explore the spiritual, conceptual, and emotional potential of the medium. There will be individual and collaborative group work on elements of film production - character design, location and scene design, writing, improvisational and scripted acting and shooting, camera and sound recording tools and techniques, editing, and post-production. The class will include screenings, readings and discussion of experimental films from the inception of the avant-garde through the most contemporary experimental work being produced today. You will explore the visual and aural experience of moving image and sound through a variety of alternative shooting, recording, editing and interdisciplinary installation and presentation options. Students begin the semester by developing a film concept and planning production. Working individually and collaboratively, you will then shoot the film and complete a preliminary edit. Through critiques and further editing and shooting, you will work, re-work, and start over with your material to discover unplanned changes in tone, flow, experience, and meaning. Students need to provide their own portable drive and 1-2 SD cards for each class, and may choose to purchase their own subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud if they wish to use their own computer. Prerequisite: ARTS major, ARTS 1704

ARTS 3770 - Animation

Credits:	4.0 [max 12.0]
Course Equivalencies:	ArtS 3770/ArtS 5770
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall & Spring

In this course, students will be introduced to a variety of techniques of digital animation. Through short exercises and longer projects, students gain experience with digital 2D animation in Photoshop and After Effects as well as 3D animation in Maya. Through practice and application, students explore the tools and methods of animation. The course begins with focused exercises and culminates in an independent project. Classes consist of demonstrations, independent work time, historical and contemporary animation screenings, in-progress and final critiques, and self-assessments. This course strives to further the student?s knowledge, skills, and artistic achievement in animation. This is a class for undergraduate (3770) and graduate (5770) students of varied experience and skills, and the outcomes above are evaluated on progress and participation. All students successfully completing the class will have created one, in?depth, short animation and several short animation exercises. They will leave the class with a working knowledge of Photoshop, Maya, and other animation skills and techniques. prereq: ARTS 1704 or Instructor Consent

ARTS 5770 - Animation

Credits:	4.0 [max 12.0]
Course Equivalencies:	ArtS 3770/ArtS 5770
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall & Spring

In this course, students will be introduced to a variety of techniques of digital animation. Through short exercises and longer projects, students gain experience with digital 2D animation in Photoshop and After Effects as well as 3D animation in Maya. Through practice and application, students explore the tools and methods of animation. The course begins with focused exercises and culminates in an independent project. Classes consist of demonstrations, independent work time, historical and contemporary animation screenings, in-progress and final critiques, and self-assessments. This course strives to further the student?s knowledge, skills, and artistic achievement in animation. This is a class for undergraduate (3770) and graduate (5770) students of varied experience and skills, and the outcomes above are evaluated on progress and participation. All students successfully completing the class will have created one, in?depth, short animation and several short animation exercises. They will leave the class with a working knowledge of Photoshop, Maya, and other animation skills and techniques. prereq: ARTS 3770 or Instructor Consent

HSCI 4321 - History of Computing (TS, HIS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	CSci 4921/HSci 4321
Typically offered:	Fall Even, Spring Odd Year

Developments in the last 150 years; evolution of hardware and software; growth of computer and semiconductor industries and their relation to other business areas; changing relationships resulting from new data-gathering and analysis techniques; automation; social and ethical issues.

CSCI 4921 - History of Computing (TS, HIS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	CSci 4921/HSci 4321
Typically offered:	Fall Even Year

Developments in last 150 years; evolution of hardware and software; growth of computer and semiconductor industries and their relation to other businesses; changing relationships resulting from new data-gathering and analysis techniques; automation; social and ethical issues.

University Catalogs

Digital Media Studies Minor