Basic information about the course
Course title
Mystory – Digital English
Course site
Digital English wiki space http://mystory-digitalenglish.wikispaces.com/
Course audience
Pre-entry overseas students with IELTS 5.5 or above
Length
10 weeks
Short description of the course
Due to the growing pervasiveness of visual information in the contemporary media, there is often a fear that we are turning into a society of spectacle, a disengaged and uncritical audience of mere consumers (Debord, 1967). However, as Ulmer (2003) believes, digital hypermedia, with its associative logic of creative thinking and the aesthetic of popular culture might work toward creating a more responsible, active and digitally literate (or in Ulmer's words 'electrate') prosumer.
Therefore this experimental course focuses on the issues of digital literacy, with the particular attention to the visual turn, attempting to harness the learner’s creativity by asking them to produce their own visual artefacts, according to the old principle ‘know thyself’. The topic of the visual exploration is the student’s own identity, following the premise that the unexamined life is not worth living.
The course attempts to mirror the 5-stage creative process as described by Csikszentmihalyi (1996) which consists of preparation, incubation, insight, elaboration and evaluation, during which the learner works on their mystory, a multi-layered meditation of the self, electracy, visual experimentation and creativity. By enriching the story with an additional interpretative layer of academic commentary, the course aims to assist the prospective post-graduate student in reconsidering the value of creativity and visuality as potentially desirable attributes in their own academic development.
Move on to read about the intended learning outcomes.