The program offers three complementary areas of study: digital media, interactive computing, and professional writing.
Track: Digital Media
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: None
An introduction to digital media for interactive multimedia majors through the study of state-of- the-art methods of creating digital media: painting programs, digital image editing, time-based, and interactive authoring programs. Computers make creating and editing still and time-based media easy and effective. Through studio sessions, students construct various types of digital media. Seminar sessions include critiques of student work, readings, and discussion that examine the evolving aesthetic, technical, and social implications of this work.
Track: Interactive Computing
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: None
A first course in computing languages for interactive multimedia. Students are introduced to the art of programming through state-of-art multimedia technologies. Through intensive laboratory experience, students learn the programming fundamentals (e.g., variables, functions, control structures and logic, persistent storage and networking). Problems related to interactivity are emphasized (e.g., through assignments based on HTML and Flash coding). Students will understand the distinction between mark up languages, scripting languages and general purpose programming languages and develop proficiency in the first two. Persistent storage and networking concepts are introduced through high-level applications. Efficiency, data structure organization and objects are introduced within the context of interactive computing problem solving.
Track: Professional Writing
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: None
An overview of and practice in writing for business, technology, institutions, trade, professional associations, and journals.
Track: General
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: Two of the following - IMM 110, IMM 120, IMM 140
An interdisciplinary class, bringing together the various disciplines that inform the field of interactive multimedia, and providing a conceptual and practical overview of the design, theory, and processes of interactive multimedia. Students will apply these concepts, theory and processes to the creation and evaluation of media artifacts, and work together collaboratively to produce a media project.
Track: Digital Media
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor or IMM 110
The course surveys traditional and computer animation history, techniques, and terminology. The student will learn basic concepts and skills of 3D digital imaging, animation, rendering, and principles of motion and continuity. The student will produce three-dimensional animation.
Track: Interactive Computing
Typically Offered: Annually
Prerequisites: Both IMM 120, IMM 270
This intermediate-level course explores the computational aspects of interactivity. The evolution and history of user interaction, with an emphasis on effective communication, is explored. Topics include but are not limited to: simple question/answering; teletype and text-based computer communication; dialog and turn taking; cursor driven menus; graphical user interfaces and events; hypermedia; integration of multimedia and streaming. Modern techniques will be mastered using HTML, javascript, and Flash, providing students with practical skills to support the conceptual framework of the course. Projects require students to apply design skills to integrate textual and graphical media in order to achieve a range of communicative goals.
Track: Professional Writing
Typically Offered: Annually
Prerequisites: Both IMM 140, IMM 270
This course develops proficiency in reporting and writing short features for print, broadcast or online media. Beginning with a foundation in hard news reporting: the classic inverted pyramid, students will learn to analyze, produce, and edit news analysis pieces, opinion articles, profiles, and other common kinds of feature stories.
Track: Digital Media
Typically Offered: Annually
Prerequisites: IMM 270
Digital media have led to new methods of communication that affect how we work, play, and see ourselves and our environment. When digital media combine with interactivity and new means of distribution such as CD, DVD, and the Internet, the result is interactive multimedia. This course develops the student's understanding of interactive media and its relationship to digital media. It explores interactivity, its design, and production, including delivery formats and digital distribution systems. Students develop a project in their chosen area. This course uses critiques of individual student work, readings, and discussion to examine the evolving formal criteria and social implications of this work.
Track: Interactive Computing
Typically Offered: Annually
Prerequisites: Both IMM 120, IMM 270
This course will discuss theory and practice of searching and retrieval of text and bibliographic information. Topics covered include automated indexing, statistical and linguistic models, text classification, Boolean and probabilistic approaches to indexing, query formulation and output ranking, information routing and filtering, topic detection and tracking, as well as measures of retrieval effectiveness, including relevance, utility, and miss/false-alarm. Techniques for enhancing retrieval effectiveness including relevance feedback, query reformulation, thesauri, concept extraction, and automated summarization. Experimental retrieval approaches from Text Retrieval Conferences (TREC); modern Internet search engines (Google, AltaVista, etc).
Track: Professional Writing
Typically Offered: Annually
Prerequisites: Both IMM 140, IMM 270
This course teaches students the writing, scripting, and document design skills needed to create training materials, technical reports, and technical or business proposals in print, online, or interactive formats.
Track: Digital Media
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: IMM 270
Acquaints both music majors and non-majors with all the fascinating facets of electronic music through two different means: 1) learning its history by listening to important electronic works by various seminal 20th-century composers; and 2) elementary composing of electronic pieces via basic training on the software sequencing program in the Department of Music's computer laboratory. Previous music experience is not a requirement.
Track: Determined by Advisement
Typically Offered: Fall
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor or CSC 340 or IMM 270
This is a multidisciplinary course that invites students from a variety of disciplines to participate in the development of a game design while learning about the underlying architecture of a game engine. Students will customize a broad set of learning goals to their own needs, ranging from the purely artistic to the purely technical. Lecture and workshops will provide a full range of exposure to game development including game engine design, story telling, interactivity, networking for multi-user, 3-D pipeline for games, sound, music and dialog. Each semester will focus on a particular type of game, including but not limited to 'role playing', 'first person shooter', 'immersive learning', 'real world simulation.' Students will also address issues of gender and racial equity in the games industry as well as social, ethical and health concerns.
Track: Determined by Advisement
Typically Offered:
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor or IMM 270
Focuses on current or specialized topics in interactive multimedia. May be repeated for different topics. May fulfill intermediate or advanced requirements, with permission of coordinator.
Track: General
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: IMM 270
Working closely with their instructor, students develop research projects that expand their personal experience and break new ground in their chosen area of research. The proposals, background research, testing and prototyping from this course provide the foundation for the execution of a final, polished project in IMM 493 - Projects Master Capstone
Track: Digital Media
Typically Offered: Fall
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor, coordinator, and IMM 270
Video Art I builds on time-based knowledge and skills learned in IMM 110/Introduction to Digital Media. It advances students' technical and conceptual understanding of video with an emphasis on editing and building a personal vocabulary. Students will focus on production skills (using different sound sources, lighting, and advanced framing) and post-production skills (codex, complex editing, and compositing) while further developing a conceptual approach to this medium. This course will look at the digital medium of the QuickTime movie as a turning point of video/film in an art context; works by innovators in the field of single-channel video artists are studied. Required reading and writing assignments will investigate video art history and current theories and practices with the medium. The course will be taught by demonstration, lecture, presentations, and critiques.
Track: Interactive Computing
Typically Offered: Spring
Prerequisites: IMM 270
This course focuses on creating dynamic or database-driven websites and the production of streaming media, extending the student's technical and creative skills beyond design to the construction of web applications. Students learn to integrate front-end design with multimedia content and dynamic data. The course includes instruction in a diverse set of scripting languages and applications. The course is oriented toward technical students with creative aspirations as the use of the internet as an expressive social medium is explored.
Track: Determined by Advisement
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor and IMM 270
Individual, in-depth study of an area in interactive multimedia developed in consultation with a faculty mentor. May be repeated for different topics.
Track: Interactive Computing
Typically Offered:
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor
The study of how to make the computer behave intelligently. Topics: state-space methods of problem solving, heuristic search techniques, representation and use of knowledge, applications and design of expert systems, natural language processing, vision and image understanding, and programming in LISP, Prolog, or any of the latest AI languages.
Track: Interactive Computing
Typically Offered:
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor
This course introduces the student to abstracts of well-known database systems and the design and implementation of a database system using a relational database package.
Track: Digital Media
Typically Offered: Annually
Prerequisites: ADA 210 or IMM 210
This course builds on the foundation in 3D computer animation begun in IMM 210. It develops the student's basic animation skills with additional emphasis on 3D object creation and animation techniques (model building, rendering, animating). Creative and conceptual development are emphasized throughout the course and students develop individual animation projects.
Track: Digital Media
Typically Offered: Fall
Prerequisites: ADA 285 and another IMM or ADA animation course, or IMM 110
An advanced course in digital media that combines 2D and 3D still and motion image creation with video editing, compositing, and sound in order to produce dynamic media. It explores the way that images, sound, and narrative elements combine to produce significant and meaningful visual effects extending through time. The class looks at the history, aesthetics, and current practice of time-based media. Students will design, produce, and present advanced media projects based on appropriate computer and digital media technologies. Students will use high-end desktop software integrating digital paint, tracking, masking, keying, particles with 2D and 3D compositing and special effects. Students will cover the structure, interface, workflow, and techniques used to create sophisticated and complex shots, scenes, and graphic sequences.
Track: Professional Writing
Typically Offered: Spring
Prerequisites: Both IMM 140, IMM 270
This course will explore existing and experimental methods for telling interactive stories. Interactive stories are defined as stories that allow the audience, listener, or reader to participate in the shaping of the narrative. Students will be able to articulate the differences between linear, non-linear, multilinear and meta-linear narratives. Students will analyze stories, they will create their own interactive stories using multimedia technologies, and they will hypothesize about the potential usefulness and social utility of new storytelling technologies under development.
Track: Professional Writing
Typically Offered: Annually
Prerequisites: Both IMM 140, IMM 270
The course teaches basic skills associated with investigative reporting. Students will learn to mine and interpret official data, to use technology commonly employed in computer-assisted reporting, and to formulate and test a journalistic research hypothesis. Particular attention will be given to issues of ethics, privacy and freedom of information.
Track: Determined by Advisement
Typically Offered: Spring
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor or IMM 365
This is a multidisciplinary course that invites students from a variety of disciplines to participate in the implementation of a robust demonstration video game. Programmers, software engineers, digital artists , sound specialists and musicians work collaboratively to create a single game (designed in Games I). Each student defines a personal role in the process so that no two students will complete the same set of course requirements. All students however participate in learning about and implementing a project management structure to plan and execute the sequence of activities that must take place to complete the game. Each semester will focus on a particular type of game, including but not limited to "role playing", "first person shooter", "immersive learning", "real world simulation." Students will also address issues of gender and racial equity in the games industry as well as social, ethical and health concerns.
Track: General
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: IMM 380
Working closely with their instructor, students execute the research projects originally proposed and prototyped in IMM 380, creating innovative and polished works that both exemplify and extend the ideas and techniques acquired in their previous coursework.
Track: Determined by Advisement
Typically Offered: Every Semester
Prerequisites: Permission of coordinator and IMM 270
An opportunity to work with interactive multimedia professionals in consultation with a faculty mentor.
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