Practices in Digital Culture

Catalog description

Understanding literacy, having context for technocultures, telling stories, and exploring ethics are critical to being an informed individual in contemporary life; but becoming an active citizen in society requires the skills to engage on a deeper level with technologies. In this class, students will focus on living technocultures from 1970-present and engage in critical evaluation and analysis of technocultures in the modern and postmodern eras. Over the course of the term, students will focus on a particular technological category, located in its own cultural setting. They will develop, and implement their own project proposal for in-depth study of a specific technology or use-case that has application for their own interests or goals. Students will begin their exploration using grounded theory, though the nature of their projects will dictate what methodology they will employ. During the class, they will work in small groups with others using similar methods in the exploration of their research and course content. Students will be incorporating tools and skills developed in at least two of the DIGC track courses in their projects. Students are expected to either have taken at least two of the following: DIGC 1200 , DIGC 1600 , and/or DIGC 2000 or bring sufficient prior expertise to analyze and problematize a technological practice or arena in a real world setting with the guidance of the instructors of those courses. The full cluster is recommended.