Nov 21, 2024  
Fitchburg State University 2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
Fitchburg State University 2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog

Digital Media Innovation, B.S.


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Chairperson

     Program Coordinator  
Jeffrey Warmouth      John (J.J.) Sylvia IV  
     
Professors      Associate Professors      Assistant Professors
Laura Baker      Jonathan Amakawa      Amy McGlothlin
Xuzhou Chen      Deon Brock      Wafu Unus
Michael Hoberman      Catherine Buell      
Margaret Hoey      Lisa Grimm  
Randy Howe      Frits Lander  
Jane Huang      Frank Mabee  
Ben Railton      Christa Marr  
Don Tarallo      Kevin McCarthy  
Samuel Tobin      Kyle Moody  
Jeffrey Warmouth      Les Nelken  
       Ozge Ozay  
       Ricky Sethi  
       Britton Snyder  
       David Svolba  
       John (J.J.) Sylvia IV  
       Elise Takehana  
       Heather Urbanski  
       Joseph Wachtel  
       Abdulkeni Zekeria  

Objectives for the Program in Digital Media Innovation


This major is designed to creatively explore digital media in a way that can be applied to a wide variety of careers and across a large cross-section of disciplinary practices. New digital tools continue to reshape industries across the globe. The courses in this major allow students to develop a range of new digital skills that span social media, multimedia storytelling, information design, data studies, coding, and more. Developing a wide set of skills  across media will allow students to emerge from the program ready to meet the needs of a flexible and changing global economy. The Digital Media Innovation (DMI) major offers students the hands-on opportunity to explore the way that digital technology and computing are changing social and cultural systems in commerce, the law, the arts, and the broader human experience.

The DMI program culminates in a capstone project that demonstrates the changing ways we construct narratives using data and make technologies and practices that reconsider the human experience in a digital age. The capstone project is geared around their scholarship and professional development, giving them an opportunity to develop professional portfolio pieces that will assist them in their careers.

The Digital Media Innovation degree is typically awarded as a Bachelor of Science (B.S.). The Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) will be awarded if the student has completed courses demonstrating advanced intermediate proficiency in a world language.

Student Learning Outcomes


B.S. and B.A. in Digital Media Innovation

Students who complete this program will be able to:

  • Engage in concepts related to the humanities, contingent with critical thinking abilities, including - but not limited to - historiography, digital recreations of texts, interpolating messages between disciplines, and technologically-enhanced textual analysis. 
    • Integrate and assess digitally driven research goals, methods, and media with discipline-specific inquiry.
    • Assess information and information technologies critically;
  • Integrate academic work with community engagement to produce tangible, engaging, audience-aware products. 
    • Produce engaging digital narratives using emerging tools (such as 3D printing, 360-degree video, augmented reality and creative multimedia coding).
    • Create social media strategies for outreach and content generation.
    • Collaborate respectfully with diverse others to respond to community needs and assets through the process
  • Evaluate and critique the impacts of data on society and how data can be used to address issues such as social justice and inequality.
    • Explain the impact of data on their personal life, field of study, and future career.
    • Create, collect, and analyze data for a variety of purposes. 
    • Design and create data visualizations.
  • Analyze complex problems and apply learning to take responsible action in contemporary global contexts. 
  • Adapt and apply skills, abilities, theories, or methodologies gained in one situation to new situations to solve difficult problems or explore complex issues in original ways. 

Requirements for the Major in Digital Media Innovation


The Bachelor of Science and the Bachelor of Arts degree in Digital Media Innovation requires 33 semester hours in its major requirements.

Academic Program Requirements


Program Curriculum Requirements

The program aims to offer Digital Media Innovation as a viable and appealing opportunity to students as a potential double major. To allow for double majors, particularly in English Studies, Communications Media, Game Design, History, and Geographic Science and Technology, students can count requirements that fulfill both majors for up to three courses. While a double major is not required, given the wide range of applications for digital media innovation skills, students will have credit hour space to explore specific disciplinary or profession specific manifestations of their work. That could be a second major, a minor, or otherwise strategic use of their free electives.

Furthermore, to ensure that students have wide exposure to a number of disciplines, we also stipulate that students cannot count more than five courses in the same discipline toward their coursework in the Digital Media Innovation major.

Electives


Students must complete their choice of two 12-credit pathways from the three options:

1.    Storytelling, Narrative and Design (12 cr)
2.    Data Studies (12 cr)
3.    Digital Culture, Heritage, History, and Preservation (12 cr)

Capstone (6 cr.)


6-credit applied project learning experience where teams of students working together and potentially with community members will use a variety of theories, tools, and methods for a project that will be exhibited to the public at the end of the semester.

Storytelling, Narrative, and Design (12 credits)


This pathway emphasizes new approaches to storytelling, narrative, and design afforded by emerging technologies. How can technology allow us to craft new types of stories, and how might technology allow us to understand our past stories in new ways? Students will get hands-on experience with writing, recording, and designing using these tools.

Select 4 courses from the following list:

Data Studies (12 credits)


In this pathway, students develop the necessary skills to understand how data is being leveraged by companies, organizations, and governments to make decisions, generate profits, and persuade citizens. Students will have the opportunity to develop hands-on projects with data while exploring questions about how these increasingly quantitative practices shape our understanding of the world. 

Select 4 courses from the following list:

Digital Culture, Heritage, History, and Preservation (12 credits)


This pathway explores questions about how technology helps us record our present and interpret our past while considering the challenges the future poses from obsolescence to innovation. Courses could also consider material culture and media archaeology. This pathway offers hands-on opportunities to work on emerging digital projects.
Select 4 courses from the following list: 

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