Certificates

This course will provide a foundation in the area of data science based on data curation and statistical analysis. The primary goal of this course is for students to learn data analysis concepts and techniques that facilitate making decisions from a rich data set. Students will investigate data concepts, metadata creation and interpretation, general linear method, cluster analysis, and basics of information visualization. At the beginning, this course will introduce fundamentals about data and data standards and methods for organizing, curating, and preserving data for reuse. Then, we will focus on the inferential statistics: drawing conclusions and making decisions from data. This course will help students understand how to use data analysis tools, and especially, provide an opportunity to utilize an open source data analysis tool, R, for data manipulation, analysis, and visualization. Finally, in this course we will discuss diverse issues around data including technologies, behaviors, organizations, policies, and society.

This course examines three major categories of topics in relation to data analysis and visualization. First, this course will cover the basic ways that data can be obtained from various sources, such as raw text files, web APIs, and data repositories. It will also cover the techniques of data cleaning and how to organize data for analysis. Second, the course will cover the essential techniques for analyzing quantitative data. It will teach prediction and clustering methods that are useful to solve various real data analysis tasks. In addition, students will learn major theories and recent methods in text analysis. Third, this course teaches how to create visualizations that effectively communicate the meanings behind data and information. The course will cover key practical skills in information visualization, such as plotting, mapping, and network visualization. This course will not be mathematically intensive. Instead, the course will use existing computational tools and programming libraries to solve various problems. You will use the R language and environment intensively for data analysis and visualization.

User experience (UX) is everywhere: websites, mobile apps, software, street signs, store layouts, the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, in- car systems, in-flight experiences, etc. As defined by Don Norman, UX encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. This course introduces you to UX, UX design, and popular UX research methods, emphasizing the iterative design process. You will gain hands-on practice to solve a real UX problem for a website or a mobile app by using the design thinking approach: empathizing with users, defining the design challenge, ideating UX solutions, creating a low-fidelity prototype, and conducting usability tests. No programming or design skills are required.

This course is designed to introduce students to various digital media strategies that professionals can employ using paid advertising platforms. This course focuses on how those strategies, including search engine optimization, paid search, display advertising, shopping advertising, email marketing, and video advertising, are incorporated into the marketing process. The course provides the balance between the practical and theoretical concepts professionals must consider if they are to effectively operate in the digital marketplace within an integrated strategic communication perspective. Students will learn how to develop a search engine campaign through a hands-on project by gathering all required information, targeting specific audience groups, setting digital objectives, and creating and evaluate digital strategies.

This course blends three disciplines including pedagogy, educational and cognitive psychology and communication. Students will critique various communication and instructional models, plan for and deliver instruction both in-person and computer-aided venues, learn various methods for assessing teaching and learning and discuss the managerial and political aspects of instructional delivery and thinking.

Teaching and learning now incorporate a variety of technologies, ranging from supplementing traditional lectures to holding classes online with students across the world. This course marries traditional areas of concern for instructional communication and technology to explore the landscape of teaching and learning.

This course examines video, board and roleplaying games as activities that involve literacy practices. You will learn how to think about literacy practices beyond just reading and writing and how to evaluate the design of a game. Building on these skills, you will then learn how to identify the literacy practices associated with meaningful games, meaningful game contexts and game design activities for youth and/or adults. Practical considerations for using games in libraries and other contexts will also be addressed.

How people learn has implications for how learning environments should be designed. This course examines theories of informal learning - primarily drawing upon research from the sociocultural tradition of learning and human development - and considers how they can be practically implemented into information organization contexts. Being grounded in a sociocultural tradition means that this class will center issues of equity, diversity and justice as they relate to the organization and design of information organization contexts and settings (e.g., libraries, museums, youth programs, new media centers, non-profit organizations). For example, how do issues of culture and learning inform the development of afterschool literacy programs in public libraries or maker spaces in school libraries, especially those that serve predominantly minoritized communities? By gaining a deep understanding of how people learn across their lifespan, students will be able to consider how to create a community of learners in a range of settings in which people from various backgrounds participate. Topics covered include issues related to culture and cognition, identity development, adult-youth partnerships, access to/relationships with new digital media and design thinking.