Critical Technology and Digital Media for Learning Certificate

Digital media and technology are integral to all aspects of our lives.

We use them to communicate, create, design, collaborate, teach, learn, and assess within various educational contexts. Our Critical Technology and Digital Media for Learning (CriT-DML) Certificate program explores equitable design, digital literacies and agency, and critical thinking in applications of technology and digital media for learning.

This graduate-level certificate program is designed for any educator, instructional designer, administrator, or school technology director who wishes to broaden their understanding of and experience with digital media applications and technology for learning. In order to intentionally work toward equity, justice, liberation, and freedom, students will learn how to design learning experiences that center and support people and human processes.

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Program Facts

Program Type

Certificate in Critical Technology and Digital Media for Learning

Enrollment Term

Fall, Spring, or Summer

Format

Fully online and fully asynchronous

Credits

12

Application Deadline

Summer start: March 1 (priority)
Fall start: July 1 (priority)
Spring start: November 22 (priority)

Admissions Requirements

No GRE exam required

Duration

4 courses
Course duration: 7 weeks (during fall/spring), 6 weeks (summer)

Time Commitment

Part-Time

Program Overview

Certificate Goals

Through the four courses of the Critical Technology and Digital Media for Learning (CriT-DML) certificate, students will:

  • Learn how to examine, contextualize and critique educational technology to make sound pedagogical decisions about technology integration.
  • Develop a set of design principles for teaching and learning with technology that center equity and justice.
  • Compose new digital content (e.g. digital stories, simple video games, photo voice) that has a clear audience and purpose by moving through an iterative design process.
  • Utilize digital media technologies to nurture collaboration, dialogue, and authentic learning.

Our underlying purposes are to be intentional, innovative and curious in how we apply and adapt technology and digital media for learning.

Stackable Format

This certificate can be taken as part of theĀ online Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction program. The four courses in the certificate will provide 12 credits toward the 30 credits required in the MEd degree.

Current graduate students are eligible to enroll in these courses.

Curriculum

We will critically examine and discuss online pedagogical theories that inform instructional design, planning, activities, and assessment strategies. We will explore and discuss instructional design (ID) models and current shifts in the field toward criticality, equity, and justice-oriented praxes. We will ask critical questions about the role of instructional design (ID) in liberatory pedagogy and praxis and examine and reflect on different online engagement strategies. We use online pedagogies to guide the design and creation of online content and and critically reflect on our creations.

In this course, we will engage in critical discourse about the historical roots, present-day manifestations, and speculative futures of technological innovations. We will explore and be in conversation with scholarly texts and media that provide a critical lens on the values, ideologies and social structures encoded in technological systems. Based on this foundation, we will interrogate applications of technology in our everyday lives and education spaces, and pursue lines of inquiry about the implications of these technologies on society. Our scholarship will build on the wealth of research conducted by women and people of color to analyze the implications of everyday technologies across race, gender, class, ability and other intersections of identity. We will explore a broad range of topics, including algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), digital surveillance and science fiction. Our goals will be to follow our questions to find new questions, play with ideas, think deeply, and create scholarly artifacts that grapple with technology in the context of our collective humanity.

This course will examine the relationship between digital literacies, schooling, and identity in relation to an evolving digital media landscape. We will consider what it means to read and write, the world and the word, in a digitally constructed reality. We will collaboratively explore the deictic, participatory, networked, global, and multimodal nature of digital literacies and the implications for classrooms and other educational contexts. To do so, we will critically examine how literacies are situated and how these socio-cultural understandings illuminate issues of power and privilege. This course will be grounded in critical praxis, and therefore you will learn to compose and deconstruct a range of digital artifacts (e.g. digital stories, games, podcasts), engage in critical analysis of digital artifacts, and think about how to design digital experiences to nurture learning and literacy.

This course provides opportunities for graduate learners to explore, examine, reflect, and discuss critical learning theories that inform how we select and use digital media and technology. The course includes discussion and reflections on different digital integration models. We will examine the digital media application and equity, accessibility, and criticality. You will have the opportunity to disseminate your strategies for and experiences using digital media and technology. You will create content using select digital media and technology, receive feedback from instructors and colleagues, and reflect on how you could revise your creations.

Career Pathways

This certificate program prepares students for many different opportunities to advance their careers in technology and digital media for learning.

The following career paths are linked to the CriT-DML certificate:

  • Instructional/Learning Designer
  • Instructional Technologist
  • Student Support Services
  • Technology Educator/Curriculum Developer
  • Community Educators