Intro CCT: Inter Prob Method

0 or 3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course introduces students to interdisciplinary graduate studies in the Communication, Culture and Technology Program. The goals for the course include: development of each student’s research agenda and expertise on the topics that motivate their professional, intellectual and personal development; fostering collaborative work in a scholarly community that investigates technologies as dynamic parts of human social life; encouraging a critical and ethical use and analysis of artificial intelligence systems; and equipping each student with a problem-solving framework in order to identify important social, cultural and technological challenges and consider solutions and outcomes to those challenges. Students will explore interdisciplinarity in communication, cultural, media, and technology studies: by identifying the communities in which they want to matter; by determining what foundational knowledges, assumptions and viewpoints exist in such communities; and by considering how best to contribute knowledge to that community. A central question of this course is: How do you (or anyone else) know what you know, and how can you trust what you know? The course approaches this question by providing students the opportunity to find an intellectual home and an identity within that home (a process in which students may change their “home” frequently), and by exploring what specific experts and communities know and talk about. Students will seek to explain how sociotechnical systems work, how they are shaped by social decisions and interactions, and how in turn these systems affect, guide and disrupt the lives of their users. Besides focusing on the dialectic of sociotechnical systems, the primary goal of this course is to help each student figure out who they are in CCT and where they want to go as they become valuable contributors, experts, and creators in their chosen communities. LEARNING GOALS Thematic Foci: 1. The student’s understanding of themselves and their research interests. 2. Use, discern and analyze technological systems (such as AI) in their role in content and knowledge creation and as systems of power. Methodology: 1. Understanding of a range of theoretical frameworks and how they are applied to different research goals. 2 Understanding of the meaning and value of interdisciplinarity. 3. Practical methods for creative lateral thinking. 4. Qualitative and quantitative research Methods. Interdisciplinary Problem-Solving: The ability to select and apply theoretical frameworks, research methods, and creative thinking to your own research topics. Theory to Practice: 1. How to present novel arguments and new ideas through concise writing and arguments well supported by research and citations. 2. Use communication and technology (including AI) and design media to express and communicate ideas to a variety of audiences and understand how digital tools arrange and manipulate information.