Research and Information Studies Minor

As students visit local museums and galleries, they become familiar with many of the Twin Cities' exhibition facilities and reflect on the experience of viewing art. This course offers an approach to understanding and appreciating the visual arts as one develops critical thinking skills. Emphasis is placed on the articulation of ideas through written and spoken words. Note: Students are responsible for their own transportation.

Full course description for Museums and Galleries

This internship is designed to give students an opportunity to learn about the basic functions and day to day operations of an educational art gallery. Students will assist in the installation and dismantling of various exhibitions, featuring numerous forms of art. In doing so, students will gather practical knowledge about handling and lighting artwork, creating didactics, generating and distributing publicity, working with artists and creating corresponding programming. This knowledge should qualify a student to apply for entry level positions at other exhibition facilities, create groundwork for additional coursework in Museum Studies, and/or prepare students to mount exhibitions of their own in a professional manner. Variable meeting times. Contact instructor for details prior to registering. S/N grading only.

Full course description for Exhibition Practices

This course explores radio/audio and you learn about podcast creation, international radio programs for development and digital storytelling. Students learn the craft of writing for the ear which can be translated to professional work in broadcast media, advertising, speechwriting or work as an independent artist. Through work as writers, directors and voice talent, students produce projects that range from short dialogue pieces and storytelling to news documentaries, podcast and radio plays.

Full course description for Podcasting: Writing and Producing for Audio/Radio

Digital storytelling is a growing area of multimodal communication that is part of a larger movement to empower communities and voices through the use of digital tools and platforms. Digital stories are short videos that combine narration, images (still and moving), sound effects, and music to tell a compelling story. Students will create two digital stories: a personal story and a story that promotes a cause or organization (e.g., a Kickstarter-style video). The process will include multiple rough cuts and a final version of each video, as well as extensive instructor and peer feedback.

Full course description for Digital Storytelling

This course is concerned with the impact communication technologies have had and continue to have on human societies. The course begins with a brief examination of two technologies that have had a profound impact on how people think about communication. It looks at the background and impact of current technologies. And it also looks at new and emerging technologies - such as hypermedia, neural nets, virtual reality - speculating about how these technologies will change people in the near future and later in the twenty-first century.

Full course description for Impacts of Mediated Communication

What is history? It is often said that history should be objective, that it should provide just the facts, that it should bring people a sense of the past "as it really was." Those who study and write history professionally tend to view these demands as extremely naive. It is a fact that historians have produced radically different interpretations of particular events or developments in the past. The dominant interpretations of important events have changed greatly over time. The study of these changes is called historiography. Through the readings in this course, students confront such interpretive discrepancies and changes with respect to several important historical developments, which occurred in different parts of the world and in different eras.

Full course description for Historical Interpretation

This course broadly surveys literature written for young adults by authors from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) perspectives. We will read and discuss a wide variety of literary and media genres covering important YA topics such as coming of age, friendship, ethnic identities, racialized identities, gender and sexual identities, belonging, sports, violence, and social class. The course is recommended for students who are thinking of becoming English teachers, who are parents, or who are interested in the topics and techniques of writing for young people. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.

Full course description for Adolescent Literatures

Students obtain internships in selected areas of study to gain deeper understand of knowledge, skills and the context of a given field. Faculty members serve as liaisons and evaluator between the internship sites and the university, providing information to students and potential supervisors and supervising the learning experience. Internships normally earn between one and four credits, required 40 work hours per credit, and may be served through a standard hours/work schedule or with flexible work hours scheduling, depending on the nature of the internship and site preferences.

Full course description for Information Studies Individual Internship

This course addresses issues of information access and cyberethics. These issues can include access vs. privacy or secrecy; security; the fair and unfair uses of intellectual property; free speech vs. civil rights; censorship; public policy; and the corporate bottom line, the question of who pays for what in the transmission of information and entertainment. Note: This course is about information issues and is not a technology skills building course. This is a 4 credit course and it is assumed that students are familiar with utilizing online databases for research.

Full course description for Information Issues: