Syllabus

Senior Project • Fall 2019 • 3 credit hrs
Monday • 2.30-4.20pm
370 Jay St, room 312

Professor Tega Brain
brain@nyu.edu • Office: 370 Jay St #358 (BK)

Office hours appointments.

Slack: https://spfall19.slack.com  / Join it here.

Download this syllabus as a doc here.

What is Senior Project in Digital Media?

Senior Project in Digital Media is the capstone course for the Integrated Digital Media program. This course steps through the creative process that professional artists, designers, creative technologists, and entrepreneurs must practice throughout their entire careers. In order to succeed, this course requires you to devote a lot of time and effort outside of class, throughout the entire semester.

The primary goal of this class is to foster a hunger and passion for self-directed, life-long learning and creativity. To achieve this, students will involve themselves in a semester-long capstone project that includes a robust investigation of all phases of the creative process, including research, design, development, and user testing for the production of a substantial and mature body of work, representing their creative and conceptual skills as artists, designers, creative technologists, and/or entrepreneurs. The project will be publicly shown at a showcase (dates to be confirmed) that is scheduled in final week of term. It is compulsory to show a version of your project in this exhibition.

As you engage in the rigorous practice of a professional artist, designer, technologist or entrepreneur, your project will naturally evolve and change, and may in fact take quite a different shape than what you propose in the beginning of the semester. This is normal and OK.

How do I choose my topic?

There are two options:

  1. You may choose a senior project topic that is a part a broader IDM research initiative. If an existing IDM research project is aligned with your interests, you may choose a brief from the list and have your senior project work contribute this area of work. This means joining the project team and working closely with the faculty involved. Please take a look a the list provided and discuss with me if you want to do this.
  2. You may choose to do a self devised senior project. A self initiated project can take many forms, including but not limited to the following:
  • a screen-based, digital application (website, mobile app, game, data visualization etc.)
  • a physical object, musical instrument, physical game, or interactive installation
  • a performance, event or workshop.
  • a moving image (animation, film, motion graphics, video web series, etc.) audio (podcast, sound walk etc.)
  • print medium (images, posters, zines, etc.)

The Senior Project can also be a team-based project but your teammate must also be taking this semester of Senior Project.

Project Advisors

You are required to work with a project advisor (in addition to your course instructor) throughout this semester. If you have chosen an IDM research related brief then your advisor will be the leader of this project.

If you are devising your own senior project brief, you will need to determine an outside advisor by week 4. I will assist you with this process during our first two meetings. This should be someone who is well versed on the topic or medium of your project. “Outside” might mean a faculty member from IDM, another NYU college, or another university altogether, a mentor from the professional world, an expert in your area of research, etc. You should aim to meet with this advisor at least twice throughout the term, with one of these meetings ideally being at one of your project critiques. Your meetings with this person should be documented on your project blog (date, time, length, and typed notes).

Program Goals

The following IDM program goals are reinforced within this course. Students will:

  • develop conceptual thinking skills to generate ideas and content in order to solve problems or create opportunities.
    • Students will develop a research and studio practice through inquiry and iteration.
  • develop technical skills to realize their ideas.
    • Students will understand and utilize tools and technology, while adapting to constantly changing technological paradigms by learning how to learn.
    • Students will be able to integrate/interface different technologies within a technological ecosystem.
  • develop critical thinking skills that will allow them to analyze and position their work within cultural, historic, aesthetic, economic, and technological contexts.
  • gain knowledge of professional practices and organizations by developing their verbal, visual, and written communication for documentation and presentation, exhibition and promotion, networking, and career preparation.

Course Goals

This course will help students to:

  • determine, communicate, and accomplish your own vision and goals for a project realized over 3 months
  • practice an iterative design process in conjunction with effective project & time management skills.
  • continue to hone all aspects of professional communication about your creative process and work through discourse, presentations, and writing.

Course Structure

This class will consist of:

  • Workshops
  • Group Discussion
  • Individual Meetings
  • In-class Peer Critiques
  • Project Critiques with guests
  • Presentations

Students are expected to be on time for all meetings, critiques, and presentations. Notes on some of these sessions:

Individual Meetings

Scheduling of one on one meetings with me will be determined in the first week of class. Be prepared to meet in my office and present and discuss your work at your appointed time. You should plan ahead, bring your project work to these meetings and ensure that technical requirements necessary for the review of work are addressed prior to them (eg. having a laptop ready and charged to show your progress). Individual meetings are not optional. They are important and useful. Sometimes they are most useful exactly when you feel you have nothing to talk about or show. It is normal that you may sometimes have nothing “good” to show, or even nothing at all. It is still important that you keep your appointment so that we can talk about that and help you to plan out your next steps. If for some unusual reason you cannot make your appointment, please show professional courtesy and let me know ahead of time. 

Project Critiques with guests

  • Each critique will consist of
    • 5 minutes of presenting and describing your project work and
    • 10 minutes of critique (or a combination thereof) for ~15 minutes total.

Critiques (AKA crits) are the best way to articulate your ideas to others and get immediate feedback. During the crit, the professor and your classmates analyze and suggest ways to increase the visual and conceptual impact of each existing idea. Have at least one classmate take notes for you when your work is being critiqued and do not edit the responses, whether you agree with them or not. Review your crit notes and reflect upon what was said. Ask yourself how you could combine, transform, or expand the ideas that show the most promise. However, resist the temptation to incorporate all suggestions and comments. Only utilize the ones that work for you and your project. Critiques with guests will be scheduled for weeks 5 and week 10 of class.

Rules of the Critique:

  • Be Present and Engaged (i.e. Close your laptops and stow your cellphones)
  • Give feedback to your classmates. Focus on the project and process, not the person.
  • Do NOT take feedback personally, crits are about making the project better.

Students will conduct self assessments as well as be evaluated by the professor at midterm and at the end of the semester. Any action without reflection is meaningless. Real learning only occurs as part of a reflective process. Reflection is studying your own practice as seriously as you study anything. It involves thinking about why, what, and how you create something.

Communication outside of class

  • Please direct message me on Slack about logistics (so questions on when, where, how many?). Try to use slack rather than email as you will get a quicker response from me.
  • Talk to me in person directly after class, during your one-on-ones, or set up an additional appointment to talk about issues and problems. DO NOT email long conversations. (If your email turns into paragraphs that means you should be talking to me in person not emailing me).

Student Responsibilities

  • Schedule your time (keep a calendar)
  • Come to the project critiques and your individual meetings on time.
  • Participate in project critiques and discussions. Be vocal.
  • Consult slack regularly for up to date info
  • Maintain a weekly, dedicated, project blog where you will post your weekly progress
  • Back up your work constantly
  • Complete deliverables by their due dates
  • Action – do your absolute best
  • Strive for continuous improvement
  • Pay attention to detail & craft
  • Take risks & be ambitious in your projects
  • For many of you this is your last class, so have fun!

Student Values

  • Work with enthusiasm (to learn, to explore)
  • Have self-motivation, proactiveness, and focus
  • Have patience, persistence, and discipline
  • Be creative
  • Have self-confidence and pride in your work

Attendance

  • Attendance is mandatory during project critiques and every student’s end of semester public presentations.
  • Missed individual meetings will not be rescheduled; students will have to wait for their next assigned meeting time.
  • In the event a student has little or no progress to show, he/she is still required to attend class.
  • Unexcused absences will affect your grade. One unexplained absence is allowed; after that, your final, overall, numerical grade will drop by 5 percent (1/2 a grade point (e.g. A to an A-)) for each additional absence.
  • Be on Time. More than 15 minutes late is half an absence.
  • Contact the professor IN ADVANCE if you will not be in class (in person or by email is preferred).

Grading Overview

Quantitative Grading Overview

Midterm grading:

  • 10% Project Journal/Blog (10% is allocated for 10 posts)
  • 10% Project Proposal (Weeks 5)
  • 20% Research Report (10% for Draft submission, Week 4, 10% for final publication due in week 6)

Final grading:

  • 20% Midterm Demo and critique (Weeks 8)
  • 10% Final Project Presentation(Week 14)
  • 30% Final Project and Documentation (Week 13/14)

Qualitative Grading Overview

You will be judged on the quality, relevance, iteration, completion, and presentation of your senior project work.

  • A Excellent (Work of exceptional quality; Exceeds Expectations)
  • A- Very Good (Work of high quality)
  • B+ Good (Solid work; Meets Expectations)
  • B Satisfactory (Good work; Satisfies course requirements)
  • B- Satisfactory but needs Improvement (Below average work)
  • C+ Poor Work (Below Average)
  • C Inadequate (Less than adequate work)
  • D Inadequate, incomplete work
  • F Unacceptable (The performance and/or attendance of the student has failed course requirements.)

Academic Honesty

Please review NYU’s School of Engineering’s academic dishonesty policy in its entirety.

All work for this class must be your own and specific to this semester. Any work recycled from other classes or from another, non-original source will be rejected with serious implications for the student. Plagiarism, knowingly representing the words or ideas of another as one’s own work in any academic exercise, is absolutely unacceptable. Any student who commits plagiarism must re-do the assignment for a grade no higher than a D. In fact, a D is the highest possible course grade for any student who commits plagiarism. Please use the MLA or Chicago Manual style for citing and documenting source material.

You MUST have complete rights of use to any and all materials which appear in your senior projects. This includes images, illustrations, audio etc. The source of any materials NOT created by you MUST be documented. Please remember that you can collaborate with other students to create your own media or contact the authors of your media selections for rights. I strongly encourage you to use original media for your senior projects, however should you absolutely require to use stock images, video, etc., you will need to provide a PDF of all source files and the usage rights you have purchased/negotiated or whether it is creative commons or copyright free.

Academic Accommodations

Moses Statement

If you are student with a disability who is requesting accommodations, please contact New York University’s Moses Center for Students with Disabilities at 212-998-4980 or mosescsd@nyu.edu.  You must be registered with CSD to receive accommodations.  Information about the Moses Center can be found at www.nyu.edu/csd. The Moses Center is located at 726 Broadway on the 2nd floor.

Diversity and Inclusion

The TCS Department is dedicated to the university’s goals for diversity, equity and inclusion. At the department level, we would like everyone to think about the perspectives present in their current author/book/article list in their syllabi: Are your authors diverse? Do they provide the students with diverse opinions of the topic they are studying? Are their additional authors (people of color, women) who can be added to your list? Please do think about these questions while preparing your final versions for submission.