It only felt fair at some point to give insight into the classes one might expect to take as a GDD major (for the record, I prefer the term GDD to GD&D because GD&D only evokes strange images of an alternate version of Dungeons and Dragons), so I'll start with Intro to Interactive Media (or IIM).
When I first saw this on my schedule, I thought "Hey! Cool! A Flash course!"
How wrong I was.
This isn't teaching you how to create interactive media (and, in fact, if you were excited about that idea, New Media Development might be more up your alley), but it's more an introduction to the history of interactive media. It shows how media has changed over the past 10, 15 years or so through the development of new technologies.
All in all, it's probably the most interesting history class you'll take, but it is clearly very social sciences-y. The first day, we were assigned a 2000-word paper, due in 3 weeks. No big deal, really, but just not what I was expecting going into the class.
The course has two components, a lecture component, held in a large lecture hall with about 120 students, and a studio component, held in a lab, with maybe 30 or so students. The lecture component is, if you're lucky, an interesting way of learning. I, for instance, am lucky. My professor for this class is Elizabeth Lawley, and she is fantastic. One thing you need for her class is an iClicker (which, thankfully, replaces the book Convergence Culture), which is essentially a little remote with 6 buttons on it. One turns the clicker on and off, and the other 5 represent the choices A, B, C, D, and E. This allows the professor to quickly gauge people's opinions on an issue or how much people understand. Personally, I think it's a fantastic tool that keeps the lectures feel engaging and personal. Lawley is also just a really chill professor.
I've only had one class of the studio component, so I think I'll leave that for another day.
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