CCT to Launch First Online Course this Fall

Posted in News

The Communication, Culture and Technology (CCT) M.A. program is excited to announce the launch of our first online course, CCTP 798 – Key Concepts in Technology and How to Use Them, for fall 2014. CCT Founder and Associate Professor, Martin Irvine, developed this course as part of the Georgetown Provost’s ITEL grant program , which supports new innovations in teaching and technology-enhanced learning.

This is a graduate-level, for-credit course, and is also open to enrollment for any qualified graduate student or working professional outside Georgetown. See instructions for how to apply for admission to the course.

About the Course

This course will provide students and working professionals with important conceptual and analytical tools for understanding the key concepts behind our current media and computational technologies. The course will be taught entirely online using Georgetown’s Blackboard course platform with video and multimedia presentations, and real-time video conferencing.

A unique value-add for this online course is the online library of relevant book chapters, articles, graphical illustrations, videos, and research publications that only students enrolled in this course can access. This up-to-date digital library of research and learning resources is not available in any other course.

Our course mantra is technology is too important to be left to technologists (alone). The main objective is equipping students with the current methods for understanding the key concepts, functions, and design principles of contemporary technologies to enable better-informed, higher-level participation in any field or profession. Since our computational and digital media technologies are now embedded in everything we do, knowledge of the principles of technology is essential for leadership in any field: for developing technology applications, for participating in public debates about future directions, for better-informed decision-making and advocating relevant policy. We will focus on our computational and media technologies in their larger socio-technical contexts, and investigate methods for understanding their underlying re-implementable design principles and mediating functions. By integrating research and concepts from multiple disciplines, students will learn methods for de-blackboxing technologies so that they reveal the larger technical and social systems that make them possible.

Syllabus units will include: introductions to studying technologies through their key design principles and functions; cognitive science approaches to symbolic representation and computation; key concepts in computation, software, code, and interface design; the principles behind digital media and digitization; the design principles of the Internet and World Wide Web (with recent developments and why this architecture will continue to matter); and key concepts in artificial intelligence and ambient computing (embedded and extended intelligence in the lived environment).

View the complete syllabus and course description .

How to Register or Apply for Admission

Georgetown students may register in the ordinary way through the Registrar’s system.

Non-Georgetown students or working professionals with a bachelor’s degree can apply for admission to the course through the Georgetown Graduate School’s On-line Application Site . See application instructions for non-Georgetown students .