Several exciting new courses are coming to the School of Information this spring:
Game Design
Computer gaming is a $62 billion industry, but what makes successful games enjoyable and engaging? Game-design scholar Alex Thayer teaches the design skills and processes necessary for creativity and innovation in game design, based on a solid foundation of video game theory and history.
Digital Humanities Seminar
This course will bring together students from the humanities who want to learn how technology can change their research, and students from information and computer science who want to build the next generation of digital humanities tools, with a focus on analysis of written literature.
UI Prototyping Clinic
This hands-on workshop on user-interface prototyping will introduce students to some of the ways that user-interface prototypes are created and used. Guest speakers will discuss how they create and use prototypes, and then students will create similar prototypes in a hands-on workshop. Students will learn a wide range of prototyping methods, from traditional methods such as paper and pen to digital tools such as wireframing software. (A similar course was previously taught in the computer science department.)
Digital Activism
This participatory research seminar explores civic engagement and political activism in the information age, with case studies on the Arab Spring, Iran, China, the United States, and elsewhere. The class includes both theory and real-world cases of the Internet mobilizing people by spreading alternative views and news. The course is taught by renowned civil rights scholar and MacArthur genius grant winner Xiao Qiang. (Read more about Professor Xiao’s research.)
Other interesting courses are returning to the School of Information this spring, including:
Data Mining & Analytics: The popular course from last spring explores “Big Data” and how it can add value to your business.
The Future of e-Books: Explore the shift from physical to electronic books, and develop technologies to take full advantage of the new medium.
Information-Centric Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship scholar John Danner explores what’s unique about information-centric startups and what makes them succeed or fail.
Information Systems & Health Care: How the Information Age is fundamentally changing the health care industry.
Tangible User Interfaces: The course in physical computing is always popular and innovative.
Complete list of Spring 2013 courses
Images courtesy of Flickr users Pgogy, Israel Dixon, Juhan Sonin, and Fady Aziz.