Digital Media Literacies, Custom Edition, W James Potter ISBN 978-1-5063-6052-2

Two discussions each worth 3.5% of a final grade

Three papers each worth 5% of a final grade

Ten quizzes - each quiz worth 7% of a final grade

Final paper - 8% of a final grade

None

This course is designed to help students develop an informed, critical, and practical understanding of new communication media including analysis of digital media. We will explore the goals and methods of various media industries, identify the effects media has on us, understand benefits and potential negative effects of media content, and learn techniques to become more media literate as individuals and a society.

This course helps students develop their media literacy and analytical skills. Such topics as the influence of advertising on content; the effects of media on our cognitive abilities; and the importance of real-world knowledge are addressed.

We will explore and understand the messages sent out from the media and how they implant themselves, often subtly and even subliminally, in the real world of people, locations, and events. The goal is to better comprehend media content, media industries, and how they affect us.

Film 145 (formerly DC 105) Digital Media Literacies is included in the Liberal Studies program as a course with credit in the Self, Society, and the Modern World (SSMW) domain. Courses in the SSMW domain focus on the mutual impact of society and culture on individuals and of individuals on society and culture. Particular attention is given to human relationships and behavior as they are influenced by social, economic and political institutions, spatial and geographical factors, and the events and social and cultural forces of modernity. This learning domain is concerned with such issues as the role of power and the bases of inequality in society and in international relations. It examines individual cognition, feelings and behavior as they affect the well being of members of society, relationships and collective life. The domain examines the processes of human development and learning and the importance of culture in everyday life. It emphasizes the pursuit of knowledge on such matters through the development of theory and the application of methods of inquiry that draw on the empirical investigation of the modern world. Courses in the domain explore such particular issues as poverty and economic opportunity, the environment, nationalism, racism, individual alienation, gender differences, and the bases of conflict and consensus in complex, urban societies and in global relations.

Learning Outcomes:
1. Students will use the constructs of power, diversity, and/or culture to describe examples of where, why and how inequities exists in modern society.
2. Students will be able to analyze central institutions and/ or underlying social structures and their impact on the larger society.
Methodological & Critical Thinking Learning Outcomes:
Students will be able to analyze critically research and arguments about the modern world.
Personal/Reflective Learning Outcomes:
Students will be able to reflect upon their role in the modern world, including their relationship to their own and/or other communities.
How Learning Outcomes Will Be Met
Every week students analyze media institutions, various society groups, and themselves. Students review imbalances between these three groups and suggest the ways to correct the situation.
Writing Expectations
Students in this course will demonstrate that they have mastered one or more of the learning outcomes through tests. Each test has specific goals. For example in one of the lessons, students learn how mass media programmers create marketing niches and how we, the general population, become marketing niches for the mass media. To take tests students need to research and analyze their role in this game of marketing niches and determine whether or not they may become victims of mass media advertising.