Contact: Sasha Steinberg
Photo by: Megan Bean
STARKVILLE, Miss.--As the 2015 fall semester gets underway in two weeks, Mississippi State will unveil a revised master's degree curriculum in instructional technology.
Available through the university's Department of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development, the popular program now will involve a choice of three academic concentrations--instructional design, multimedia and distance education.
Students also will be required to complete six hours of elective courses that may be completed in any of the areas not chosen as a concentration, as well as other electives approved by the student's adviser.
MSU fall classes begin Aug. 17.
Connie Forde, department head, also said the launch of an online IT master's degree is scheduled to take place next spring, pending formal approval by the Board of Trustees, State Institutions of Higher Learning.
In addition to curriculum changes, Forde said the department is opening a new multimedia classroom and video-editing studio for students and faculty. It houses 12 student Dell workstations that run Intel i7 processors with 8 GB of RAM. Each workstation is equipped with the latest software, including the Adobe Creative Cloud design suite, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Premier and After Effects, among other programs.
According to the longtime faculty member and administrator, the facility in the historic Industrial Education Building also features an additional workstation and video camera that faculty and students may use to capture video and edit movies for DVD and web productions both in and out of class.
Sang Joon Lee, Instructional Systems and Workforce Development assistant professor, will teach the multimedia concentration's design courses, while professor Chien Yu, department graduate coordinator, will lead classes in theories of multimedia learning and interactive media. Yu also is coordinating the revised graduate program.
Forde said department faculty and members of the MSU Advisory Council provided considerable input on the curriculum revisions, along with support for a multimedia laboratory that will enable the continued offering of numerous courses via distance technology.
"Our faculty now have an excellent studio for producing quality video lectures for these classes," she emphasized. "Our aim is to provide the very best distance courses that we can, and this multimedia studio provides many opportunities for us to do that."
Part of MSU's College of Education, the Department of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development works to prepare students for careers in a range of professional settings from kindergarten-higher education, as well as industrial and business environments. For more information, visit www.iswd.msstate.edu.
Additional details about the curriculum and other changes may be obtained from Forde at 662-325-7258 or cforde@colled.msstate.edu. Lee and Yu also may be reached at slee@colled.msstate.edu or cyu@colled.msstate.edu.
MSU, the state's flagship research institution, is online at msstate.edu, meridian.msstate.edu, facebook.com/msstate, instagram.com/msstate and twitter.com/msstate, using hashtag #WeRingTrue.