Graduate Courses

Digital information technologies shape our lives. The benefits and the possible dangers of digital information technologies will be explored from a multidisciplinary perspective, looking at the insights into our digital age from history, linguistics sociology, political theory, information science, and philosophy. Students will have opportunities for active reflection on the ways in which digital technology shapes learning and social interaction.

This course will focus on how to insure that we can reliably get quality information and will also consider information quality from the perspective of the suppliers of information. Principles of evaluating information exchanges and sources will be discussed and topics will include the verification of the accuracy of information and the evaluation of resources in specialized subject domains.

We do all sorts of things with information technology: we play games, we listen to music, we watch movies, and we communicate with other people. But one of the main things that we use information technology for is to learn things. Toward this end, we visit Wikipedia, Ask.com, The New York Times, and other such sites. Or we just Google stuff that we want to know about.This course is about how information technology is affecting the ability of individuals and institutions to acquire and share knowledge.

Using readings, lectures, demonstrations, and varied assignments, introduces students to search functions and indexes on the Web; proprietary databases that provide full- text articles not available on the open Web; search syntax and protocols; non-text retrieval of numeric data, photos, and other forms of information; and how to evaluate and reformulate search results.

This course surveys the history of books and publishing from the eve of Gutenberg's invention to cyberspace. We will watch as the book printing and publishing industry interacts with major movements in society and trace the development of what we know as publishing today. The later part of the course will consider the effect of digital technologies on the book, as well as the challenges that self-publishing brings to the publishing industry.

In this course, learners will acquire skills in visual design, mathematical reasoning and computational thinking to gain an understanding of data literacy. Learners are introduced to theories of cognition and visual perception as they relate to data visualization. Together, the class will create data visualizations and engage in meaning making around representations of data to explore profiling, prediction, judgement, and decision making.

This class examines contemporary book publishing in its current traditional and non-traditional forms, both print and electronic. In order to understand the status mainstream publishing often enjoys today, the course quickly reviews the rise of publishing in the 20th century. Changes, beginning in the 1980's, have resulted in the current trade book publishing situation, and in the last decade, traditional publishers have increasingly published eBooks.

This course covers theory, methods, and techniques widely used to design and develop a relational database system and students will develop a broad understanding of modern database management systems. applications of fundamental database principles in a stand-alone database environment using MS Access and Windows are emphasized. Applications in an Internet environment will be discussed using MySQL in the Linux platform.

This course is designed to introduce the basic concepts and applications of Internet-related information technology and its impacts on individual users, groups, organizations, and society. The topics in this survey course include computing basics, network applications, human computer interactions, computer-support cooperative work, social aspects of information systems, information ethics, and other economic legal issues and ethical issues related to digital services and products.