Masters of Science in Learning Design and Technology - Curriculum

This course focuses on critical thinking and communication strategies to advance students' reasoning skills to develop well-thought-out, reasoned, clear, and concise oral and written communications and present them using transmedia. Students learn effective, engaging, and strategic use of interactive media; emerging and distributed technologies for storytelling; and how to convey well-articulated and powerful narratives.

The course explores virtual and integrated learning technologies and their applications to learning organizations, learning communities, and educational settings. Future-ready technologies and techniques are applied for experiential, collaborative, social, and distributed learning. Students investigate virtual communication tools, integration of social media, virtual collaboration tools, digital storytelling, and their application to their professional and scholarly interests.

This course introduces the student to the study of ethics as a basis for value clarification, decision making, and responsible leadership in inclusive organizations and communities. Elements of ethical leadership such as cultural proficiency, social justice, power, equity, and privilege are examined. Students investigate applications and practices relevant to their academic and professional interests.

The course focuses on analysis, design, development, implementation, and assessment of learning-based solutions to organizational challenges in a variety of learning organization environments including K–12, higher education, and private and public sectors. It introduces models and methods of learning theory and cognition and learning assessments as a response to identified needs and gaps in intended organizational results. Students will investigate applications and practices of learning design, cognition, and evaluation relevant to their academic and professional interests.

This course introduces students to various methods of applied data analysis with an emphasis on the analysis of quantitative data. Students will learn about modern forms of data gathering including the mining and extraction of big data. Students will also learn to report data using powerful statistical packages and the latest web-based visualization platforms. Last, students will learn the fundamentals of inferential statistical analysis. While basic statistical theory will be covered, the emphasis of the course will be on the development of empirical inquiries and the understanding, presentation, and communication of data in organizational, workplace, and educational contexts.

This course examines the role of the entrepreneurial leader in developing innovative solutions that align with personal and organizational mission, vision, and values. Focus is placed on how a leader shepherds sustainable change from ideation, to fruition, and to evolution without positional power. Students will explore methods and engage in processes to support innovation, adaptation, and learning and promote the endeavor by building coalitions and persuasive broad-based organizational support.

In collaboration with program faculty, students will engage in a culminating undertaking in the form of a scholarly paper, a learning/training program, or a technology-infused product design in which students apply academic, theoretical, and/or practitioner perspectives explored throughout the coursework. All projects must be grounded in literature relevant to students' degree programs and presented using advanced transmedia. The Capstone Integration Experience serves as one of the final program learning outcomes assessments.

The course explores integration of learning theory and emerging technologies to create impactful and innovative learning. Students will individually master new technologies and collaboratively transfer skills to others. Students will collectively develop strategies for applying new technologies in practice and evaluate the effectiveness of new learning technologies in the workplace.

This course focuses on rethinking instruction in the context of innovation and change in formal organizations, especially in response to new technologies and the capabilities and disruptions they bring to learning and work. Studies will consider theories for creating sustainable design and innovation efforts and issues associated with the diffusion of innovation throughout organizations or systems. Concepts explored include flipped classrooms, student-centered models, learning analytics, real-time embedded assessment, gainfulness, engagement through virtual learning, mobile learning, and location-based learning.

This course focuses on the relationship between production, learning spaces, collaboration, and distribution of knowledge. Students are immersed in the technologies that support these activities in informal settings such as libraries, museums, after school, AR, VR, online collaborations and communities, and professional development, but also for students and families, lifelong learning and mobile learning in distributed environments.