XCOR 1012 New Orleans Technology Innovation Bootcamp

(New Orleans Experience)

The XCOR 1012 New Orleans Technology and Innovation Bootcamp, is a seminar course in which incoming students will be introduced to current tech innovations; Public Health, Pharmacy, Environmental, Education, and Creative Media. Students will examine growth in New Orleans through the city’s history, location, demographics, and socio-economic structure.

XCOR 3020 Design & Technology in Global Culture

The Design and Technology in Global Culture XCORE 3020 seminar course focuses on the social and cultural impacts of technology innovations taking place across the globe. In the course, students develop an understanding of current advancements and form perspectives on the cultural impacts resulting from the design. Subjects in which the course addresses: AI systems, Human-Computer interaction, UX concepts, interactive communication, cyber, and design research. Students focus on the use of innovation in various fields such as: education, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, transportation, health, and entertainment.

Reflection

In the spring of 2018, I proposed the XCOR 3020 Design and Technology in Global Culture seminar course. The course was approved by the core curriculum committee and introduced to the program in the 2018 fall semester. My goal in the course is to introduce students to new innovations as a way to prepare them as professionals in a cross-cultural, fast pace, creative and digital workforce. In the course, students are introduced to concepts in human/computer interaction (HCI) and discuss the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) vs human intelligence currently taking place throughout the globe. Through lecture, reading, documentary, and discussion, students are asked to consider ways in which the design and technology innovation benefits and challenges specific demographics. Students develop skills in collaboration, research, and writing, design processes/brainstorming, problem-solving, and strategizing. The goal of the course is to offer students an environment in which they may develop their own thoughts and perspectives on global innovation design to prepare students for a future working within a global professional landscape.

Beginning with one student in the fall of 2018, the course was scheduled similarly to an independent study. The student conducted research into the social, political use of social networking and its impact on culture, beginning with the 2010 Arab Spring and progressing into the 2016 United States election. In the spring semester of 2019, the course increased to eight students. The intimate group setting allowed for excellent conversations about new innovations. Students were introduced to projects in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Autonomous Vehicles, Dark Web, and CryptoCurrency. The course was interactive with a great deal of peer learning, where students were energetic to share discoveries and ideas. Students were assigned collaborative research projects and experienced no problem working as a team. By fall 2019, the number of students in the course grew to a capacity of twenty-five and has remained at twenty-five to thirty students since the fall of 2019.

In 2019 Tableau was added to the Design & Technology in Global Culture XCOR 3020 course. The Tableau project was introduced to students during the second half of the semester.

Students were asked to create an account in Tableau public before receiving the software demonstration during class, where they followed along on the studio computers or their own devices, familiarizing themselves with the software. The complexity of Tableau required additional class time and simplification for the research assignment. 

Working in teams, students were asked to collect data relative to one of the topics discussed in class; cyber systems, algorithms, data mining, and data visualization. They designed surveys to gather quantitative data that would be visualized in Tableau. Students were offered flexibility in choosing to design their surveys using Google forms or acquiring data sets from online resources including Kaggle.com and data.gov. Students were taught to clean their data sets before linking the content to Tableau, where they created their visualizations and infographic layouts.

During the project, I found that the technical challenges of learning Tableau, required a significant amount of time, and learning the software trumped the subject analysis. This observation encouraged me to rethink the integration of Tableau in the XCOR courses. Fall 2020, the software will be introduced at the beginning of the semester when the course lecture focuses on research, resources, and references. An additional day will be spent on demonstration and student practice. The goal of adding time for practicing Tableau will encourage students to feel comfortable with the software to utilize throughout the course of the semester.

XCOR 1012 New Orleans Innovation Bootcamp

The XCOR 1012 New Orleans Technology and Innovation Bootcamp, is a seminar course in which incoming students will be introduced to current tech innovations; Public Health, Pharmacy, Environmental, Education, and Creative Media. Students will examine growth in New Orleans through the city’s history, location, demographics, and socio-economic structure.

Reflection

Studies in Israeli technology also inspired the design of the XCOR 1012 New Orleans Innovation Bootcamp seminar course, proposed for the core curriculum (New Orleans Experience) in fall 2018. Introduced to the curriculum in spring 2019 with twenty-four students, the class examines the innovation that has taken place in New Orleans from the founding of the city to present. As a new course, I was met with challenges regarding student levels and teaching expectations. Many students were freshmen and unfamiliar with holistic non-didactic approaches to learning and felt uncomfortable working in teams or discussing ideas. There were difficulties with the internet connection within the classroom, contributing to interruptions in lectures, assignments, and student presentations. Evaluations in the XCOR 1012 class were poor in comparison with other courses. Students stated that they did not think they learned, communication was weak, and it was problematic working in groups. Suggestions that were made to improve the course included smaller groups for collaborative assignments and field trips. 

Technology & References

Reading & Discussion

NOLA Prosperity Report

NOLA Economic Timeline

NOLA Innovation

Project Assignments & Rubrics

History of NOLA Innovation

Environmental Design

Innovation as Solution to Problem: Coronavirus

Practical Innovation: DIY Face Mask

Extra Credit: Exercise

ART 3010 Web Design & Development

The Web Design and Development course will introduce students to the processes and language(s) used in designing functional websites. Students will gain knowledge in trends and techniques used for ideal user experience by studying new technologies and ways of accessing the web. In the course, students will learn the UX/UI design process, HTML5, and CSS3. Students will create websites and applications through site mapping/navigation, information architecture, wireframing / page layout, image, typography, accessibility. 

Reflection

In the Web Design and Development course, students learn about user experience design (UX) and human-computer interaction (HCI) through lectures and studio practice. Before learning to design and code websites and applications, students begin the semester by reviewing the history of the web and the technological progress that has impacted designing for the web. In the first project of the semester, students work in teams to experiment with user interaction by analyzing their own experience with the website in which they are viewing. In the project, students reviewed layout, information architecture, global and secondary navigation, visual/interactive content, and typography: readability and comprehension. Assignments in the course include design thinking process: product research, brainstorm, site-maps, wireframes, and prototyping. Currently, students have been learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Open-source applications to build a website from scratch. This coming academic year (2019-2020) I will incorporate Adobe XD into the course curriculum. Adobe XD is user-friendly software for designing wireframes and prototypes for application design. 

Lectures

Brief History of Web Design & Development

How it Works

HTML

CSS

QuizES

Quiz 1

Quiz 2

Quiz 3

Pop Quiz

Assignments

Reading & Summary

User Experience Poster

Site Mapping & Wireframing

UX Experiment & Analysis