Looking back on the second period of my studies, there were several experiences and topics that I really enjoyed. In Design Thinking & Maker Culture, I specifically enjoyed the practical foundation of the course and the hand-on experience that we got during both the tutorials and the skills sessions. I found the skills sessions really fun! I enjoyed learning how to edit sound-files and exploring how to properly use audio programmes such as Audacity. Moreover, these sessions were really useful for the podcast that we had to record a couple of weeks later. I also really enjoyed the focus on teamwork within this course. It was really useful to brainstorm together every week to think about the effectiveness and importance of various methods and perspectives that could be useful in the product design for our podcast and blogposts.
This kind of team-work was also something that I liked about the other course, Machines of Knowledge. I really enjoyed working together with my peers on specific case studies every week. There were several topics that I found very interesting during the course. First if all, I really liked the discussion on digital public sphere that we had during the tutorial. It made me realise how current technologies can have a huge influence and impact on the political and/or social perceptions of people within society regarding public spheres. Another topics that I found very interesting was data feminism. Feminism is a subject matter that is close to my heart and one that I have often examined or discussed during my undergraduate studies. Therefore, applying feminist theory to digital humanities was something that I really enjoyed. Lastly, I found the the topic on data ethics very interesting as well. Privacy matters and ethical debates regarding digital technologies (e.g. privacy infringement of governments or big corporations such as Google, whistleblowers providing classified information, etc.) have always grabbed my attention. I generally find it really interesting to analyse the political, social and ethical debates and discussion involving digital technologies and their potential impact on society, and I would, therefore, definitely consider this a potential topic for my master thesis.
All in all, I really enjoyed my second period at Media Studies: Digital Cultures. I have learned some new skills, I enjoyed the teamwork with my peers and I gained a lot of new knowledge and information during the group discussions and conversations in the tutorials!
Hi Rebecca,
That’s good to hear that you really enjoyed the courses of this second period. I can definitely relate with your comment about Design Thinking and Maker Culture. The practical part of this course was also what I preferred. I found that learning how to use programs to make audio editing was really fun and fruitful. In addition, I had the same feeling regarding design thinking tools and the session we had in class. They were really useful and allowed us to gradually move forward in our projects. Concerning, Machines of Knowledge, I also really enjoyed talking about feminism. It was a really enriching tutorial for me as I was the only men (with our tutor Jacob) in the group. I learned a lot from my colleagues and their points of views topic during this session. It was maybe sad that it was a last minute tutorial and because of that we probably have discussed feminism less extensively then other topics.
I wish you good luck with your project and all the assignments we had.
Enjoy your Christmas break!
Hi Rebecca,
sorry I’m a bit late but here is my feedback:)
Regarding the Design Thinking course you said that you really enjoyed the skills sessions for the podcast, so maybe taking a multimodal approach for your final paper would be fitting, so you could apply the skills you now learned? Otherwise you could always apply those design thinking methods you mentioned to your paper to help in the creation process. After all the thesis is kind of like a personal project.
For the Machines of Knowledge course you already know that I also enjoyed the frameworks we got to work with. You said that you are very familiar with feminist theory, so I would suggest to you to try out something new and go with another topic. For example, you mentioned the digital public sphere, which I agree, is very relevant today in an age where we spend so much time online. Maybe you could connect the framework to the theory of third spaces, which we talked about in the first period. Otherwise, I think you could even link it with the public/private debate as the dichotomy between the two is slowly blurring online, but public spheres (as the name indicates) are/were considered public spaces.
I wish you a happy holiday! See you in the new year:)