Literature & Literacies in a Digital Age (173)

In this course, students will study the forms and purposes of information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., written, visual, quantitative, oral), and evaluate the motives (e.g., social, commercial, political) behind its presentation. Students will distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text, assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author’s claims and evaluate an author’s premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information. Students will explore how media shapes and is shaped by the message, and how social, historical, and psychological factors both inform, and are informed by, our media landscape.

Students will analyze texts and information presented in diverse media and formats and determine the main ideas and supporting details. Students will then interpret this information and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study. Students will be able to identify the role of bias and perspective in various forms of media. In their writing and other media production, students will analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same topic, compare and contrast treatments of the same topic and integrate information from diverse sources into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

Evaluation is based on class discussion, quizzes, tests, oral presentations, written essays, individual and group projects, the production of original digital media, and a final assessment.