There is a current shift in education and a new direction that universities are taking to prepare students for a post-digital revolution world. In a technologically bound and dependent culture, a new set of skills are required, both socially and in the workforce. Luckily, Arizona State University’s School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) provides students with the transdisciplinary toolkit needed to explore new perspectives on the world we live in. Focused on emerging technology, media, and art, AME provides knowledge that is relevant to the current and future needs in the marketplace.
Media Literacies and Composition exemplifies the AME approach to preparing students for a reconfigured digital landscape [Editor’s note: Media Literacies and Composition is taught by CSI’s very own benevolent dictator, Ed Finn]. The course teaches students to interpret and analyze existing media so that students can create and become critics of future technology and media. This interdisciplinary course incorporates traditional skills such as writing and close readings of cutting-edge literature about science and technology. The course helps students become creators of inventive projects by giving them the writing and technological skills needed to produce creative works. Class projects involve designing a video game, reviewing technology and creating fictional magazine articles about imaginary technological objects in the future. It allows students to build the technological skills necessary for future research, while fulfilling their interests in digital media and the sciences.
AME is a program for students who want to explore new paths and redefine the way we think in our advancing culture. Students sync and blur the boundaries between creativity and labor, and are able to reach conclusions and think about social issues in unforeseen ways. AME strives to bridge the fragmented truths of traditional disciplines, and to provide fresh answers to new types of transdisciplinary questions.
Image courtesy of Chantal Wagner, used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license. Thanks Chantal!