IDIA 810.185  ||  DCD Proseminar

Spring 2007

Nancy Kaplan
CR 102
nkaplan at ubalt dot edu / 410.837.5319

Office Hours: Tuesdays 4-8 PM and by appointment (even for office hours, please schedule with Tia whenever possible to avoid double-bookings and other mishaps).

Background

A required course in the Doctor of Communications Design program, the Proseminar allows students to develop and refine their major projects.

Though the DCD is not strictly speaking a research degree, students are expected to conceive and pursue their projects with a sophisticated understanding of their chosen professional domains. A vital element of the project is its relationship to field, a discourse, or a set of practices, even if that relationship is a complete departure from previous ideas or ventures.

A traditional doctoral dissertation contributes new knowledge to its field. The DCD project may also do this, but it may alternatively demonstrate solutions to important practical problems, produce a significant prototype for some innovative product, or introduce a new development or research strategy. In either case, the project must be articulated in relation to other work in a field or a related set of fields and the proposal must demonstrate the relevant relationships, documenting important sources in a research (peer-reviewed) literature as well as in more popular discourses.

Learning Objectives

• Define an area needing a new application of research to a problem
• Conduct research of relevant peer-reviewed and popular sources
• Propose a course of new research or a significant, useful and executable work of application that demonstrates ability to apply professional skills of design and expression, to analyze a problem, to define an audience, and to integrate content, medium, and market. The work may be done in any of a number of media, e.g., print, digital interactive, audio, video.

Course Overview

Since the DCD is a multidisciplinary degree, students in the Proseminar necessarily come from various backgrounds with a wide range of interests. According to its governing documents, the DCD "prepares students to lead in developing and applying advanced communications techniques to commerce, culture, and society." Therefore all DCD projects are assumed to have some significant involvement with advanced communications techniques and technologies, and DCD students may be expected to take a particular interest in this area. This year's readings focus on the emergent social and economic structures such technologies enable.

While the readings may have no immediate bearing on the project you propose, they should help you understand the larger context and implications of your work.

Course Requirements and Policies

Students are expected to attend every scheduled class, complete the reading assignments, and participate actively in discussion. A statement of general academic policies appears on my Web site. That statement is an extension of this document. See http://iat.ubalt.edu/kaplan/policies.htm. Please also read the University's policies in the Online Policy Guide.

Required Books:

Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. The Social Life of Information. ISBN 9781578517084

Garfinkel, S. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century. ISBN 9780596001056

Greenfield, A. Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. ISBN 9780321384010

Shneiderman, B. Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. ISBN 9780262692991

Recommended Books:

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition. ISBN 9781557987914