Syllabus

Syllabus

Course Logistics

Instructor

Joline Blais, IMRC Library or 246 Boardman
Office hours Tuesday  12:30-2 pm, and by appointment
3 credit hours

Time and place

Tues/Thurs 9:30-10:45pm; individual meetings with Instructor

Requirements

NMD 306 or equivalent

Course Objectives

  • Design with integrity: Clarify your values and goals and design a project that reflects these clearly
  • Show what you know: Integrate technical, conceptual and perceptual skills learned in former New Media classes
  • Explain why your work matters: Contextualize your project in a historical, cultural or local setting
  • Respect your audience: Assess the relevance and potential impact of your project on intended audience
  • Use feedback: Assess most likely audience(s) for your project, work audience feedback into project design
  • Support your peers/teammates: Provide high quality feedback on all projects
  • Grow your skills: Learn any new skills or techniques required by your project
  • Get funding: Write a grant proposal (best ones are submitted to CUGR) with timeline, gaunt chart and budget
  • Get your work out: Plan digital and social media PR for your project
  • Reflect on what you’ve accomplished: Create a short video that summarizes key lessons and achievements of your work

Course Guidelines

Grading

Your grade will be based largely on how and if you accomplish your own goals, since the bulk of the work for capstone will be self-directed.  This means setting clear, do-able and accurate project goals organized into Tasks, Phases and Milestones will be very important both to the management of your project and to establishing your success.

  • 60% Capstone project and presentation
  • 20% Milestone evaluations
  • 20% Video, Poster Web Portfolio

NOTE: Because of the grading structure of this class, procrastination will adversely affect your grade and progress. You need to be passing the class at midterm time in order to pass the class.

Course Expectations

Completing work

Get your assignments done on time. Procrastination will cause you stress and will result in less enjoyable and lower quality project, as well as difficulty in meeting your own goals.  While it is possible to revise your timelines, you will still be accountable to it.

Attendance

Use class attendance to raise your grade!

My goal is to make class time useful, by using that time to accomplish some of your tasks, building skills, or providing you with useful information or contacts in the field.

To boost your grade ALWAYS come to class with work you can do on your project, and ALWAYS show up. This is an easy way to move your work forward and earn a higher grade.

Occasionally, some or al of you may need to use class time to accomplish outside of class tasks—this must be scheduled in advance and approved in order to get attendance credit.

Behavior

Respect everyone: professor, visitors, classmates, yourself.  This means telling your truth and doing so in ways that are constructive and supportive.

Show this respect to professor, guests, and classmate with clear attention and engagement, and give quality feedback.

Equipment

Bring your laptop and/or whatever you need to enable you to work during every class. Your instructor will let you know exceptions to this rule.

Make use of the various equipment and labs on campus, including IMRC, Focus Ring/Stillwater, SCIS labs and any other available resource you need.

Personal constraints

See me if you have an especially difficult personal constraint–such as your own illness, or children or parents you need to care for. I may not be able to help, but I can probably direct you to someone who can. Students with disabilities can also go directly to Services for Students with Disabilities (581-2319). I do not hold any personal circumstance against you in terms of grading (though I cannot credit you for work not done) and will work with you to achieve your best work.

Don’t wait until these constraints affect your class work, however. Try to alert me to any impending or disruptive issues before and as they happen, so I can do my best to get you the support you need (and have paid for) to get over those common life challenges.

University Policies

For notices applicable for all courses in the School of Computing and Information Science, see https://umaine.edu/computingcoursesonline/notices/. More explicitly see:

Syllabus Disclaimer

In order to best accommodate student projects and course goals, the format, schedule or content for this course may be modified. In addition, student input may alter the content and direction of our work, and I will adjust to make the course as relevant to our mutual learning goals as possible. In either event, you will be provided an updated schedule and/or syllabus that will supersede this version.