Program Highlights of the

Digital Art & Design Program

Portfolio Development
Since the portfolio is the primary tool graduates use to secure employment, the majority of our assessment falls into the portfolio assessment model. We focus much of the latter part of the program on portfolio development. While portfolio development plays a large role in all DAAD courses, a number of courses in particular focus on strengthening the portfolio. The DAAD 2600: Production Art and DAAD 2860: Digital Art & Design Project courses, in particular, are designed to enable students to develop strong portfolio pieces.

Employability Skills
Employers continue to stress the importance of oral and written communications skills, and analysis, problem solving and critical thinking skills. As a program that graduates professional-level English language communicators, we take the development of these skills seriously. This development takes place in all of our program courses. It is important for prospective students to realize that while much of the program is visual and design-oriented, an equally large part of the program is centred on the written word. We are communicating messages on behalf of clients to target audiences. This requires strong skills in writing, editing, organizing information, analysis, problem solving and critical thinking.

Experiential Learning
The Digital Art & Design program includes an option for a six-week internship or equivalent. This gives Digital Art & Design students a start on their portfolio of practical experience. This requirement can be satisfied in a number of ways: contract work a student may pick up while in the program or over the summer, full-time summer jobs, initial employment after leaving the program, or actual internship arrangements. With the support of the program faculty, students gain valuable experience in work or contract situations. It is the student's responsibility to approach employers or secure contract work to satisfy this requirement. This requirement is structured so that it leaves opportunity for individuals to direct the structure of their own experience portfolios.

Self Directed Learning Skills
A core set of skills, in fact almost literacy's now, are life-long learning skills, and the continual identification and acquisition of required skills and knowledge growth. There is a strong need for individuals in the program to gain experience in identifying learning goals and establishing self study plans to shape the direction and focus of their personal development to some extent. Rather than blindly memorizing facts, or focusing on discrete software skills, students today need to develop meta-cognitive and self-evaluation skills so they can assess what they need to learn in order to solve a problem or complete a project. Students who learn these skills will be able to direct their own learning, to recognize what skills they need, and to acquire those skills on their own. As a visual portfolio driven program, students strongly shape their focus by the amount of time spent on various assignments, but more and more we are getting students who wish to pursue extended study in a given direction, or wish to develop a large scale portfolio piece. Again, to provide maximum flexibility and to accommodate the learning interests and requirements of the various students, we have introduced a project-based course to our program. The format of this course will be weekly seminars and supervised labs to keep students on track. Students who are not well suited for this type of course may satisfy the requirement with a justified elective offering that satisfies their learning objectives.

Program Activities
Our program is currently characterized by three types of activities: traditional lectures, small group seminar exploration of problem solving techniques and computer applications, and lab sessions which provide students and opportunity to work to solve communications problems and develop their portfolios on their own with instructors and lab demonstrators providing individual support as needed. We have what we feel is a good blend between lecture, small group and individual learning. The character of much of the activity from the student perspective is centred on constructive or problem-based learning. By explicitly recognizing problem-based activities and their corresponding processes in particular, we believe we can strengthen the value of these activities. We also couple problem-solving activities with explicit written and oral planning activities as well as explicit written and oral reporting activities upon completion. We also strive as much as possible to create work-like environments and experiences.