Catalog Description

101 [ARTS] Introduction to Digital Technology & Culture 3 Inquiry into digital media, including origins, theories, forms, applications, and impact with a focus on authoring and critiquing multimodal texts.

 

Course Description

This course is an introduction to digital technology and culture that integrates interdisciplinary knowledge from literary studies, rhetoric and composition, art and design, business, and sociology to prepare students for the technical and cultural challenges of the 21st century. While this class is committed to introducing students to the history and culture of digital technology, it will also provide students with hands-on experiences with digital tools and delve into questions about what makes something digital and how we conceptualize our lives beyond the digital.

 

Course Goals

Because this course is categorized as an exploration credit , its goals and outcomes align with the Seven Learning Goals and Outcomes, as defined by UCORE. During the semester, though, we will pay special attention to the following:

• Critical and Creative Thinking

  • Integrate and synthesize knowledge from multiple sources

  • Understand how one thinks, reasons, and makes value judgments, including ethical and aesthetical judgments

  • Understand diverse viewpoints, including different philosophical and cultural perspectives

  • Combine and synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways

• Quantitative Reasoning

  • Make judgments and draw appropriate conclusions based on the quantitative analysis of data, while recognizing the limits of this analysis

  • Identifying and evaluate important assumptions in estimation, modeling, and data analysis

• Scientific Literacy

  • Pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence and apply conclusions from such arguments appropriately

  • Recognize the societal benefits and risks associated with scientific and technological advances

• Information Literacy

  • Determine the extent and type of information needed

  • Use information to accomplish a specific purpose

  • Access and use information ethically and legally

• Communication

  • Recognize how circumstances, background, values, interests and needs shape communication sent and received

  • Tailor message to the audience

  • Express concepts, propositions, and beliefs in coherent, concise, and technically correct form

  • Choose appropriate communication medium and technology

• Diversity

  • Critically assess their own core values, cultural assumptions and biases in relation to those held by other individuals, cultures, and societies

  • Analyze and critique social, economic, and political inequality on regional, national, and global levels, including identifying one’s own position within systems

  • Actively seek opportunities to learn from diverse perspectives and to combat inequalities

• Depth, Breadth, ad Integration of Learning

  • Show a depth of knowledge within the chosen academic field of study based on integration of its history, core methods, techniques, vocabulary, and unsolved problems

  • Applying the concepts of the general and specialized studies to personal, academic, service learning, professional, and/or community activities

  • Understanding how the methods and concepts of the chosen discipline relate to those of other disciplines and by possessing the ability to engage in cross-disciplinary activities

 

Student Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students will be able to understand:

• The relationship and influences between technology and culture

• The foundational definitions and methodologies of Digital Humanities

• The use of various digital tools, including geo-tracking, textual analysis, and data visualization software

• The language and culture cultivated by social media sites

 

Reading List

• Digitized Lives by TV Reed, selections

  • Chapter 1: "How Do We Make Sense of Digitizing Culture?"

  • Chapter 2: "How is the Digital World Made?"

  • Chapter 3: "Who Are We Online?"

  • Chapter 6: "Does the Internet have a Political Bias?"

  • Chapter 8: "Are Kids Getting Dumber as their Phones Get Smarter?"

• Networks of Outrage and Hope by Manuel Castells, selections 

  • “Dignity, Violence, Geopolitics: The Arab Uprisings”

  • “Occupy Wall Street: Harvesting the Salt of the Earth” 

• Too Big to Know by David Weinberger 

  • Chapter 2: "Bottomless Knowledge" 

  • Chapter 5: "A Market Place of Echoes?" 

• The Black Box Society by Frank Pasquel 

  • Chapter 2: "Digital Reputation in an Era of Runaway Data"

  • Chapter 3: "The Hidden Logics of Seach"