Curriculum Overview

The MCDM curriculum is designed to explore the transformative properties of digital communication. To create academic and programmatic alignment, these four themes capture the MCDM’s learning focus and approach:

Innovation: Staying ahead of the digital curve of today and tomorrow.

Entrepreneurship: Maximizing opportunities while managing risk through creative business models

Community: Building sustainable relationships through the power of social networks.

Story: Engaging through multi-platform narratives that persuade and grow trust.

These are the core elements that all MCDM students must now draw upon if they wish to engage with trust and persuasion in this noisy digital age.  They imply the creation and curation of compelling stories in partnership with communities of interest, as our students explore connective technologies that by their very nature challenge their ability to entirely control the process.

MCDM students learn to manage the risk and rewards of these technologies, in order to achieve Return on Investment in this communicative interaction.  It all begins with getting someone’s attention; it lives on through a sustained level of multi-platform engagement.

This is our guiding MCDM curricular philosophy.

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MCDM Curricular Requirements

The MCDM program entails completing 45 credits to graduate.  The majority of courses are 5 credits each, which translates to nine classes to complete the degree. Up to 10 credits can be an independent study, and up to 5 credits can be taken in a department outside of the MCDM. Classes are held on weekday evenings or Saturdays to accommodate working professional students.

MCDM Course Design

Core Courses:

There are three required core courses, which provide students with essential theoretical underpinnings, definitions, and perspective.

All incoming students are required to take the first two foundation classes in their first three quarters in the program. “Narative & Networks” is required of all incoming students in Fall Quarter, and “Research Strategy & Business Practice” can be taken in either Winter or Spring Quarters. The Law & Policy course can be taken at any point a student chooses.

• Foundations: Narratives & Networks in Digital Media
• Foundations: Research Strategy & Business Practice
• Foundations: Law & Policy

Electives Courses:

MCDM electives complement the core courses in an intimate project-based seminar format.

Following the foundation courses, “Tier 1” courses are introductory classes that reflect the four thematic areas. More advanced courses, or “Tier 2,” build on the respective intro classes and provide more specialized areas of study, recognizing that students appreciate the flexibility to take courses in a sequence that best fits their quarterly goals.

While the MCDM is not a thesis-bearing graduate program, MCDM students are strongly encouraged to produce a final “summit” project that represents an integration of work informed by their identified interests, culminating in a final product that is showcased at an annual June event. These summit projects are as diverse as our student body, and include digital game prototypes, films, white papers, and research studies.

To help facilitate the summit projects, each Spring Quarter the MCDM offers a “Summit Design Studio” course for students interested in pursuing such a final project.

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Curricular Pathways:

To help MCDM students navigate the program on a day-to-day basis, all courses are grouped in three curricular pathways:

• Communication & Distribution
• Business & Analytics
• Emerging & Design

These pathways are strictly for categorization and to provide guideposts as MCDM students work with their MCDM academic adviser to chart their path through the program. A case can be made that many MCDM classes, by their very nature, fall into multiple categories.

Pathways 2011-12 Curriculum

Communication & Distribution

Transmedia Production & Distribution (Gauntt)
Managing Your Web Presence: Strategic Digital Platform Fundamentals (Gill)
Advanced Multimedia Storytelling: People and Story (CLP)
Multimedia Storytelling: Content & Flow (Macklin)
Multimedia Storytelling: Digital Distribution & the Story (Keller)
Managing Your Web Presence: Advanced Content Creation, Curation, and Optimization (Gill)

Business & Analytics

The Anyscreen Era: How the Marketing of Mobile & More Affect Your Storytelling (Shepherd)
Business Fundamentals in Digital Communications (McPherson)
International Trends in Mobile Technology and Marketing (Wells)
Marketing and Branding in Digital Communication (Marr)
Digital Transformations of Organizations (Neff)
Advanced Mobile Media Development and Integration (McIvor)
Analytics: Theory to Application (Batra)

Emerging & Design

The Health of Networks (Rufo)
Young Entrepreneurs and Digital Media as Change Agents in Emerging Markets (Salkowitz)
Leadership in the Digital Age (Crofts)
Interactivity Design: Usability (Evans)
Gaming, Virtual Worlds, and Communication (Rufo)
Summit Design Studio (Crofts)
Interactivity Design: Practice (Levin)