Our Mission

The M.A. in Interactive Media program prepares students to think strategically across media platforms, plan and create interactive media content, and manage information in a digital age.

Overview & Calendar

Interactive media refers to the transformative ways that people share information and ideas through creative uses of technology.

Text, graphics, audio and video have been integrated into digital environments, allowing a user or audience to interact with the source of this content (typically via computer or mobile device) rather than receive content in a packaged linear form (such as a newspaper or evening newscast where the communication flow is one-way). Examples of interactive media include web sites, user-generated content, interactive television, gaming, interactive advertising, blogs and mobile telephony.

Elon's Master of Arts in Interactive Media program will enroll approximately 36 students for a year of intensive, full-time study. The program invites working professionals who desire to return to school for a year of retooling, newly graduated communication students who wish to extend their education to interactive media, and graduates who earned other majors in college and now want to pursue a professional graduate degree.

Students will work in a high-tech graduate suite as they research, plan and develop interactive media projects. The program also includes a domestic or international fly-in to collect content for a Winter Term team project to serve the public good.

Classes are Monday through Friday during the daytime. Skills classes will have fewer than 20 students; the full cohort of graduate students will be in theory and strategy courses.

View the Interactive Media catalog for more information

Curriculum

The Interactive Media program requires 11 courses (36 semester hours) from Summer II through Spring Term. Students admitted without prior undergraduate courses in Media Law and Ethics and Media Writing will take them as preparatory classes.

July:

• Seminar in Media Law and Ethics
• Seminar in Media Writing

Fall: (August to December)

• Digital Media Workshop
• Theory and Audience Analysis in an Interactive Age
• Interactive Writing and Design
• Producing Interactive Media
• Interactive Media Strategies
• Visual Aesthetics

Winter: (January)

• Interactive Project for the Public Good

Spring: (February to May)

• Contemporary Media Issues
• Graduate elective
• Graduate elective
• Interactive Media Capstone (6 hours)

Graduate electives:

• Intellectual Property Law
• Multimedia Storytelling
• Virtual Environments
• Public Opinion through New Media
• Interactive Media Management and Economics
• Application Development
• Professional Apprenticeship

The curriculum is designed for graduate student development in four stages:

• Media tools. The summer Digital Media Workshop ensures that all students have a strong grasp of the tools used to gather content. This includes audio recorders, still and video cameras, and a working knowledge of editing and Web software. This is a non-graded course so that students work together to become skilled in media tools.
• Classroom interactions. Courses in the Fall Term are teacher-directed, with students learning both concepts and skills through in-class and out-of-class exercises and assignments. Students also learn the higher-level software packages for the creation and enhancement of interactive media.
• Team projects. In the Winter Term, students are divided into teams and, under the direction of faculty members, travel to a domestic or international site for about a week to gather content through interviews, photographs, audio and video. Teams return to campus and, on deadline, complete their interactive projects for the public good.
• Individual capstone projects. In the Spring Term, students complete an individual capstone project as a culminating experience. This gives students not only a team project for their portfolios, but also an individual project. Students have a greater choice of electives in the spring, while some students may prefer to emphasize strategic issues others may choose to emphasize advanced skills development.

Master’s in Interactive Media Academic Calendar

2012-2013 Academic Calendar Updates

Spring Semester 2012

May 16: Student Project Exhibition

May 17: Graduation

Summer 2012

July 23 - 27:  Prerequisite Seminars

July 30 - August 16:  Digital Media Workshop

Fall 2012

August 28:  First Day of Fall Classes

National Accreditation

The School of Communications is accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. Elon is one of only 18 private colleges and universities in the nation with an accredited communications program.