Course Descriptions

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Summer Course

IME 6010 Interactive Media Bootcamp (3)

Provides an intensive introduction to concepts and applied skills related to visual communication, interaction design, multimedia production, and coding for user interfaces. Students develop the ability to organize elements for a variety of visual effects and gain an understanding of how to use technology to create meaningful digital communication.

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Fall Courses

IME 6005 Opportunities in Interactive Media

This course supports students’ development as interactive design and media professionals. Students learn about different professional opportunities from program alumni and other guest speakers, develop their professional profile with portfolio and resume workshops, coordinate the production of the capstone exhibition, and explore current topics and themes in the interactive media professions. Depending on the semester offered, students may also engage in preparation work for upcoming courses.

IME 6030 Interactive Media Theory and Research (3)

Introduces students to the theoretical investigation of audiences and social processes in interactive media. Students learn to evaluate and apply theoretical concepts from academia and industry regarding social psychology, design ethics, media economics, and legal frameworks such as copyright. Students also pursue a self-directed research agenda that culminates in a scholarly literature review and intellectual foundation for the capstone project.

IME 6040 Front-End Development (3)

Web development allows us to explore how to render ideas and designs into consumer content. Using the building blocks of the Web, students are introduced to coding markup and scripting languages, gain familiarity with responsive frameworks, and implement interfaces for interactive content.

IME 6050 Producing Interactive Media (3)

Covers the fundamental practices associated with interactive media production, including interface design, applied multimedia and usability refinement. In the effort to provide users with optimized opportunities for choice and control, students will apply design guidelines such as Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules and production/ design trends emerging in various industries. Students will author interactive experiences and explore historical origins, as well as today’s best practices.

IME 6060 User Experience (3)

This course examines how social and psychological issues apply to user experience and interaction design from both theoretical and practical approaches. It provides an overview on how interactive technologies affect users on visceral, cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral levels. It discusses the process of user-centered design, the issues of usability, and the methods for evaluating various interactive interfaces.

IME 6070 Visual Aesthetics (3)

Principles and practices associated with design as both a physical manifestation of an artistic idea and a practical expression for communicating messages through images, icons and other elements that form the information architecture common to interactive media. Students analyze the aesthetics of artistic expression and further existing interface design skills.

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Winter Course

IME 6100 Interactive Project for the Public Good (3)

Students work as a cross-functional team to create an interactive media project that serves the needs of an authentic client organization. Students develop, design and deploy original interactive projects in a deadline-driven setting. Students enhance their skills in understanding design client needs, problem solving, intercultural communication, project management, and stakeholder engagement. This course may include required domestic or international travel.

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Spring Courses

IME 6970 Interactive Media Capstone (6)

Students complete an individual capstone interactive media project accompanied by an explanatory paper. The master’s capstone project requires students to create an original, fully functional interactive media presentation for news, entertainment, informational services or strategic communications.

Spring Electives

Electives for the Interactive Media program are a part of the spring course load. Students will pick three electives from those offered.

IME 6210 Intellectual Property Law (3)

The intersection of law and technology has always been rife with legal dilemmas. New laws often come on the heels of new technology. This course introduces one of today’s flashpoints for this difficult relationship: the law of intellectual property. Digital technology makes it easier to create interactive media but perhaps also easier to violate copyright and trademark laws in the process. This course will examine intellectual property law for creative content producers, and address both practical considerations and public policy concerns.

IME 6220 Multimedia Storytelling (3)

Analysis of the effective use of online tools to tell stories in journalism, documentary, corporate and marketing applications that is then applied through interactive creations such as websites. More importantly, students experiment with diverse ways of using text, graphics, photos, sound and video to effectively transmit information and to interact with users.

IME 6230 Virtual Environments and the Metaverse (3)

This class will examine the emerging field of virtual environments, with a focus on the recent history of virtual worlds and the latest developments in virtual reality software and hardware. Students will read scholarly papers about virtual environments, have hands-on experience with multiple virtual worlds, and develop 3D content for virtual reality head-mounted displays. Additionally, the potential for and problems with virtual worlds and virtual reality will be discussed as these emerge as new communication formats.

IME 6240 Public Opinion through New Media (3)

With the advent of virtual communities, smart mobs, and online social networks, old questions about the meaning of human social behavior have taken on renewed significance. Although this course is grounded in theory, it is equally rooted in practice, and much of the class discussion takes place in social cyberspaces. This course requires active participation of students and a willingness to immerse in social media practices-mailing lists, web forums, blogs, wikis, chat, instant messaging, virtual worlds- for a part of every weekday during the semester.

IME 6250 Interactive Media Management and Economics (3)

Forms of interactivity are changing economic models for media companies, corporations, and non-profit organizations seeking to communicate with desired audiences. In turn, this changing economic model influences management strategies for interactive media initiatives. In this course, students will survey economic analyses of the media and advertising industries in market economies, using that information to understand media performance.

IME 6260 Application and Interface Design (3)

Students will learn to apply design and user experience principles to create and improve user interfaces for mobile applications and other interactive products. Students will master industry-standard software to wireframe, layout, and prototype different kinds of interfaces.

IME 6270 Game Design and Development (3)

This course introduces students to the process of designing, prototyping, and developing games. Students will understand how games are designed through explorations of game theory and best practices, learn how to prototype games using both low-fidelity and high-fidelity methods, and program games using industry standards for various output devices including mobile, desktop, and console environments.

IME 6280 SEO, Analytics and Social Media Strategy (3)

This course develops the ability to use content types, content quality and presentation strategically to engage audiences in online and mobile media. A combination of hands-on assignments, lectures and experiments are used to develop skills with current tools and prepare to learn emerging tools throughout the career.

IME 6290 Data Mining and Visualization (3)

Data, whether “big” or “small,” is most often buried in rows and columns of numbers that repel the average communicator – but that data may contain powerful information that in some instances, if exposed and analyzed, could lead to significant actions or decisions by people, businesses, governments or nonprofits that affect the general public.

IME 6310 Digital Brand Communications (3)

This course examines interactive media communication tools and how to communicate about brands successfully in the digital realm. The course covers such topics as sponsored search, advertising on blogs, advertising networks for websites, social media as branding tools, advertising and branding in the mobile space, and web analytics. Students will gain an understanding of the interactive media landscape and develop applied brand communication skills.

IME 6320 Immersive Production

The rapid development of interactive technology has transformed both the production and consumption of video content. Fully-digital production processes and increasingly sophisticated digital effects are increasingly the norm in film and television studios, newsrooms, live broadcasting, and video game studios. This course explores interactive and immersive approaches used in video production and post-production. Students will understand how traditional production processes are changing with the introduction of interactive tools which provide users with life-like, augmented, and virtual reality video experiences.

IME 6330 Contemporary Media Issues (3)

Focuses on the historical and contemporary state of personal and public interaction with popular media, within the context of technological developments and their impact on society and culture. Students study journal articles, survey the research literature, and write papers on the historical trajectory of information consumption from the emergence of mass-produced paper-based texts to the development of the World Wide Web. Students should use this course to evaluate the current ethical, political, and economic controversies that will be a part of their daily lives upon entering media professions.

IME 6981 Professional Apprenticeship

An off-campus, professionally supervised apprenticeship that allows students to work in a professional setting where they use their interactive skills as if the student were an employee in the corporate or nonprofit world. Students secure an internship with guidance from the graduate program director and coordinator of interactive outreach. Apprenticeships are three hour courses, which means students work a minimum of 240 hours on site. Students enrolled in the apprenticeship work closely with the graduate program director on campus and with a site supervisor who is employed by the apprenticeship organization.

IME 6991 Special Topics in Interactivity

Because of the fast-changing world of interactivity, special topics may arise periodically that warrant a special course for students. Special topics classes will be added to the curriculum in such cases as electives.