Creative Synthesis

A course is simply a unit of teaching. We try to structure courses that we offer to be practical and timely, focused on understanding current issues while building fundamental skills. Ideally these courses embody on open, transparent, and pragmatic approach to education. Specific current or recent courses appear on the right. Generally these courses fall into one of the following categories.

• the lecture course, where the instructor gives lectures with student interaction;
• the seminar, where students prepare and present their original written work for discussion and critique;
• the colloquium or reading course, where the instructor assigns readings for each session which are then discussed by the members;
• the tutorial course, where one or a small number of students work on a topic and meet with the instructor weekly for discussion and guidance.

Our courses often combine these formats. Lecture courses often include weekly discussion sections with smaller groups of students led by the principal instructor. Almost all of the courses include practical project based learning focused on software development and design.

Students are expected to do various kinds of work:

• Attending course sessions.
• Reading and studying course readings assigned in the course syllabus.
• Discussing material they have read.
• Writing short and long papers based on assigned reading and their own library research.
• Completing practical exercises.

The exact work required depends on the course. As often as possible, we try to keep these courses ‘open’.

Additional Talks

There are some additional talks (available from slideshare) that have been given that don’t quite fit into a larger course:

• Hacking Philosophy or Philosophy for Media Arts and Sciences - A survey of major philosophical branches, problems, examples with an eye towards computation, logic and (hopefully) media arts and sciences.