Offered in fall and spring semesters. See LionPATH to schedule.
Significant updates for Fall 2026!
This survey course explores emerging technologies used to produce and consume popular cultural artifacts. Through individual and discussion-based learning activities, students will analyze and interact with information and communication technologies across popular culture genres. The course content and the assignments are directed at helping students to both create and critique digital media in ways that demonstrate their understanding of, engagement with, and reflections upon the relationships among people and organizations, emerging technology, and popular culture. Students will also design and produce digital media that demonstrate their ability to integrate and synthesize central concepts and themes from the course.
In the fall 2026 semester, IST 130 is a highly interactive course. It incorporates a combination of studio-like activities, lively discussion, and interactive lecture to examine artificial intelligence and human creativity from a sociotechnical perspective that integrates technical understanding with human contexts. The course asks a central question: What is the appropriate role of AI in the creative pursuits of humanity? Students explore how artificial intelligence shape, mediate, and transform creative work across visual art, narrative, music, and interactive systems.
Students develop a conceptual understanding of the predictive and generative models underlying contemporary AI tools — how systems learn patterns from training data, how prediction produces text, images, and audio, and why these systems hallucinate, encode bias, and fail in characteristic ways. They apply this understanding through a recurring analytical framework — CAN / SHOULD / HOW — used across the semester to evaluate what AI systems make possible, what role they should play in human creative work, and how humans can direct them responsibly. Course activities emphasize human-centered approaches to AI, developing transferable habits of systems thinking, responsible innovation, and critical evaluation of technology in use.
Working in a studio-like format, students design and produce creative projects through intentional human–AI workflows, creating media across multiple forms and documenting their design decisions, AI workflows, and ethical reasoning in structured reflections. Throughout, students engage the broader social, ethical, and organizational implications of AI-generated media within evolving information ecosystems, including misinformation, copyright and creative labor, bias and representation, and automation and overreliance.
This is an introductory course in IST and fulfills the General Education requirement for Arts (GA). The course is delivered through hands-on engagement with digital media, interactive systems, and AI tools, emphasizing collaboration, experimentation, and critical reflection. No prior experience with AI or technology is required.
