Students in Ashley Hinck’s Introduction to Digital Communications course came in with a tendency to take the digital world for granted.
YouTube is for silly videos.
Google provides easy answers.
Facebook is for friends.
But it wasn’t long before they were making some eye-opening discoveries.
Hinck distinctly remembers a class discussion about the Google “filter bubble,” which allows the company to tailor search results according to dense data profiles it maintains on individual users. In short, who you are determines what you get: a search for “Egypt” may produce results related to protests for one person, and travel for another.
Many students were aghast when they learned this.
“The Google discussion really rocked their world,” says Hinck, a teaching assistant in the Department of Communication Arts and a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric, Politics & Culture. “We debated the ethics of it – is Google hiding stuff we need to see? Some students said smarter searching was the answer. Others said that’s not enough. It was great to hear them discussing the trade-offs people are willing to make for information in the online world.”
This “sifting and winnowing” approach is at the heart of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s new Digital Studies Certificate Program, which includes Hinck’s class as one of its core courses. Launched this fall as part of a larger push to better prepare students for life and work in a fast-changing digital environment, the certificate is open to all majors, from humanities to social sciences to STEM. Drilling deep in four core areas – digital media, digital practices, visuality in digital design, and information structures – the program’s goal is to graduate students with more than just technical proficiency.
“What we’re trying to teach, along with the tools and the technology, is the ability to think critically about the Internet, online communication, and digital media in general,” says Rob Howard, Professor of Communication Arts, who led the development of the certificate program, along with colleagues Jon McKenzie, Associate Professor of English (and coordinator of the campus Digital Humanities Initiative) and Kristin Eschenfelder, Associate Professor and Director of the School of Library and Information Studies.
“It’s a true liberal arts approach to digital literacy.”
Popular with students, businesses
The response to the program, launched in September, has been “overwhelming,” according to Howard.
“ We've had more than 60 students say they’d like to declare it,” he says. “Parents have been calling, wondering how their child can get it before they graduate. Our initial concern was, if we build it, will they come? They’re actually coming faster than we could have anticipated.”
One reason: A Digital Studies Certificate looks great on a resume. The certificate showcases a student’s intention to engage with digital media in persuasive and eloquent ways, and above all, indicates an ability to be nimble in a fast-changing environment.
Wisconsin businesses are already calling. Among several calls Howard has received was one from the NOVO Group, a recruiting firm in Milwaukee, which was looking for students with a “digital media skill set.”
Alexandra Offerdahl is one who would qualify. A senior who will graduate this month, Offerdahl found she had already taken enough digital media courses to receive the brand-new certificate, and was thrilled to add it to her BA in Life Sciences Communication.
“I’m hoping that the DSC is just the start for UW-Madison,” she says. “I’m hoping we have a major for social media or web design some day. My dad thinks social media is kind of risky, because it’s always changing. But that’s what I like about it.”
MIU funds new faculty, courses
The Digital Studies Certificate program features more than 75 courses, many already existing but scattered amongst various schools and departments. Howard spent a year working with colleagues in his own department as well as the School of Library and Information Studies, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Life Sciences Communication and others, to bring these resources together under the Digital Studies umbrella. A grant from the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates allowed the program to hire six new faculty and create seven new courses with more on the way.
“This would never have been possible without MIU,” says Howard. “Equipment is expensive. Expert faculty are hard to find. The grant enabled us to expand as we needed to create larger intro-level courses, even in video production, for freshmen and sophomores.”
One of those larger courses is Eric Hoyt’s Introduction to Digital Media Production. A new faculty member hired this fall as part of the MIU grant, Hoyt and his team of teaching assistants use the state-of-the-art Hamel Digital Media Lab in Vilas Hall to teach technical proficiency with cameras, editing software and other equipment. They also focus on issues of copyright and intellectual property, as well as a vitally important component of video production: storytelling.
“My analogy is a great guitar player, who has an appreciation of the wood, the strings, the tuning, and all the other components of the instrument. They make better music because of that understanding. The same is true of digital technology,” he says.
Times have changed since the days when film production students made movies that no one saw, except their classmates. Now, students in digital media production classes must think about the consequences of videos that are widely shared across many platforms.
“We try to provide all these concepts and training in a way that’s broadly applicable across disciplines, and goes beyond the University,” says Hoyt. “We are all digital citizens, whether we like it or not. I believe strongly we should empower students to express themselves through confident use of the technology.”
Abbey Schneider, a first-year student in Eric Hoyt's Introduction to Digital Media Production course, made this video introducing her project partner, first-year student Yue Xia (who goes by her English name, Naomi) to the rest of the class. “It was really gratifying to see how they used the technology to get to know each other, even across cultures,” says Hoyt.