Digital Media and Communications Learning Outcomes

The Learning Outcomes for Digital Media and Communications are guided by nine core standards broken into four major themes. These learning outcomes are embedded in the courses, assessments, and learning abroad opportunities throughout the Digital Media and Communications major. The program is designed around the fundamental idea that media play critical roles in all our lives. Students develop sets of skills to research, critically analyze, and creatively produce media that matter. 

To remain in good standing in the Digital Media and Communications major, students are expected to meet three benchmarks over the course of their program: maintaining a 2.0 GPA or higher in their courses; successfully completing a study abroad or study away experiences; and meeting proficiency on the capstone project.

Learning Outcomes 

Theme 1: Media Studies – Graduates demonstrate the ability to thoughtfully describe, critically analyze, and insightfully reflect upon the histories of media and communication studies scholarship. Graduates showcase their mastery of these materials in the research underpinning their content creation processes in a variety of media settings, and by generating ideas, questions, or proposals about the theme for their ongoing academic and professional development.

Standard 1: Theoretical Frameworks – Graduates understand the historical lineages of relevant, prominent communications and media studies scholarship, and exhibit the ability to critically situate key concepts and academic lines of inquiry within their respective cultural and social contexts. 

Standard 2: Methodological Tools – Graduates understand the foundational methods and methodologies of communications and media studies research, including media analysis, message design, and audience research, facilitating their critical examination of the impacts of media and communication technologies on past, present, and future audiences.

Standard 3: Critical Media Literacy – Graduates exhibit the media and information literacy required to critically navigate the contemporary (digital) media landscape, as well as chart courses through emerging media environments and the forms of discourse they inspire.

Theme 2: (Digital) Media Arts – Graduates demonstrate the ability to thoughtfully describe, critically analyze, and insightfully reflect upon the use of a range of production tools to create creative, rigorous, and engaging content. Graduates showcase their understanding of these tools by conceptualizing, drafting, creating, and publishing a portfolio of multi-mediated productions.

Standard 4: Content Production Skills – Graduates understand the central concepts, tools of production, and structures of the discipline(s) in which they will independently be creating their content, designing and producing professional research and portfolio projects.

Standard 5: Storytelling and Content Curation – Graduates understand how to apply media analysis and storytelling conventions in the creation and curation of dynamic and compelling visual art and professional multimedia productions, as well as connect differing concepts and perspectives to engage audiences in critical thinking related to historical, contemporary, and emerging local and global issues. 

Theme 3: Journalism – Graduates demonstrate the ability to thoughtfully describe, critically analyze, and insightfully reflect upon the historical trajectory and contemporary state of journalism as a cultural institution, a global industry, and a set of practices. Graduates generate ideas, questions, or proposals about the theme for their ongoing professional development, mastering the skills required for the production of interesting and important investigative stories.

Standard 6: Journalism Skills and Practices – Graduates understand the central concepts, tools of production, and structures of inquiry at the heart of journalism and documentary storytelling, and exhibit the ability to independently conceptualize, draft, write, and publish a portfolio of newswriting and reporting.

Standard 7: Ethical Journalism and Social Responsibility – Graduates understand and uses multiple methods of accurate, responsible, and ethical journalism across media platforms to explicate local, regional, national, and international connections, and make their findings accessible and meaningful for their audiences to help them become a more informed citizenry.

Theme 4: Global Media – Graduates demonstrate the ability to thoughtfully describe, critically analyze, and insightfully reflect upon the wide-ranging, intersectional implications of the global socio-economic, cultural, and environmental currents affecting the historical trajectory and contemporary state of media production. Graduates generate ideas, questions, or proposals about the theme for their ongoing professional development, mindful of their own positionality, on their way to embracing their global citizenship.

Standard 8: Reaching Global Audiences – Graduates understand the central concepts, tools of production, and structures of the global discipline(s) in which they will independently be creating their content, sensitively mindful of the differing international contexts in which they will work to reach and engage with global audiences.

Standard 9: Navigating International Media Systems – Graduates understand differing global lineages of relevant communications and media studies scholarship, and exhibit the ability to critically situate key concepts and academic lines of inquiry within their respective cultural and social (inter)national contexts, including understanding and navigating the legislative comparative differences across international media systems.