Master's in Digital Marketing and Design Curriculum

The Digital Marketing Strategy course is set up as a strategic and practical guide to diagnosing marketing gaps and opportunities for organizations from high-growth B2B technology and SaaS companies to budding consumer brands. The course is designed to teach the fundamentals of Marketing the Future-the new ways brands connect with their customers and make a ripple in their markets-marketing based on trust, authority (expertise + reputation) and consistency.

Provides an overview of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) including organic, local, and paid results. Course content investigates applications to both B2C and B2B businesses with a focus on technical considerations for achieving high search results and effective return on investment (ROI) for paid listings. Special topics covered include keyword development, landing page optimization, programmatic advertising, implications of AI and Machine Learning, and the future of Search.

This course provides detailed information about how to write copy and messaging for various digital formats. Special attention is given to differences in form factor, audience targeting, and SEO (search engine optimization) implications of various types of content. Content marketing tactics are explored in detail.

This course is set up as a strategic and practical guide to designing, conducting and measuring multichannel marketing initiatives for B2B and B2C brands. The course is designed to teach the fundamentals of 21st Century Digital Marketing based on creating on-going, seamless customer experiences across digital and traditional channels. Included in the foundational topics covered in this class are the three stages of marketing: The New Customer Journey, and Why the Marketing Campaign is dead; Developing customer journeys the fundamentals; Content, Channels and Measurement for Consumer Journeys. In addition, this course will look at the principles of paid, owned, and earned as converged digital marketing, and the role of diagnosing the channels for acquiring new customers.

Digital marketing is a broad field that encompasses more than just acquiring new customers to your product or service. In Conversion Rate Optimization, you will learn how to improve the customer journey and reduce friction throughout the funnel. You will learn best practices to streamline signup flows, improve onboarding, nurture leads, and increase customer lifetime value. At the end of this course, you should have a better idea of how to handle digital touchpoints for both prospects and customers that have raised their hands to express interest in your product or service.

This course will provide an introduction to advanced analytics and measurement in the areas of social networking and media, web and marketing analytics. The topics covered include the history, tracking, performance, optimization, metrics, analysis, visualization, decision making, reporting and best practices in each of those three areas. E-commerce will also be covered as it relates to web and marketing.

The field of user experience (UX) encompasses a wide range of processes and methods for designing interfaces and products that are usable, useful, and desirable. Over the last decade, user experience has become a key driving force in successful product development. This course introduces students to user-centered design (UCD) and its associated methodologies, including user research, interaction design, and usability testing. Students will become conversant in a range of UCD approaches while gaining practical experience creating portfolio-ready deliverables. Although the course will focus primarily on screen UI design, the research and design principles mastered apply equally to emerging design challenges such as voice, service design, and Internet of Things (IoT).

This course enables students to build on their critical thinking skills and apply oral and written communication strategies to solve organizational problems and drive organizational change. Students will develop, execute, and measure strategies applicable to a wide range of industries. Topics include negotiation and facilitation; crisis communications and public relations; virtual and global communications; and stakeholder management.

Multimedia Creation for Campaign Storytelling introduces students to the basics of digital and audio production. By engaging students around concepts of digital storytelling, this course examines how brands are using digital media across online platforms from social media to blogs and websites to tell stories that engage audiences and convert consumers. Through lectures and hands-on projects, students will gain competency in digital imaging and video editing and learn how to apply these skills to design, and build compelling creative for brand and performance marketing campaigns.

This course presents ethical dilemmas in digital marketing and works through the implications of various actions, such as tricking search engines (typically called ‘black hat’ techniques), posing as customers in social media, making false or exaggerated claims, and using questionable or sneaky channels (e.g. popups and plugins). In this course, we will explore several issues or concepts in depth, first introducing the facets and aspects of the topic, then utilizing that knowledge to develop our principles and values through dialogue and the examination of multiple perspectives.

The field of Digital Marketing is continually evolving. New technologies, methods and platforms are continually introduced and evolving that may foster new marketing capabilities. The Digital Marketing & Design Special Topics course facilitates the introduction of cutting-edge practices and technologies as they are introduced in the industry. Outcomes will vary by course, but in general terms, students will be able to:

• Apply emerging practices specific to the course.
• Place concepts introduced in the course into the context of the Digital Marketing industry and the existing suite of standards and practices employed.

Projects today are the means for introducing innovation and implementing an organization’s strategy, and project management is a discipline to deliver value. In this course, students will study the foundational principles and concepts that are applicable to a wide variety of projects. The course will explore the predictive (traditional) as well as agile approaches to managing projects. Using a real life-like case study in which an organization addresses a business problem by launching a new project, students will have an opportunity to walk in the shoes of a project manager as the project goes through the stages of initiation, planning and execution. Working individually as well as in groups, students will apply the tools and techniques that they have learned and experience first hand the challenges of working in teams solving complex project problems.

Business Intelligence can be described as the process of transforming data into knowledge. This transformation involves the use of processes and applications to extrapolate meaning from a company’s data. This meaning usually ends up on dashboards, so that senior management can monitor assumptions and key performance metrics that are part of long-term planning cycles. As Business Intelligence processes mature, they begin to focus on using data to gain new insights. We call these processes Business Analytics, and this information is the key to Strategic Decision Making. This course provides students the opportunity to develop an in-depth understanding of the modern uses of business intelligence processes. Many companies now commonly use analytics to bridge the gap between existing business intelligence processes and current day needs. Students will be able to understand the business goals and objectives driving these needs. The course also explores the importance of various types of information systems and infrastructure as a framework for business decision making.

This course will focus on the topic of big data and its management, including the tools and techniques designed to effectively analyze and visualize big data for strategic advantage. The course will cover definitions and concepts related to the areas of big data, strategic analytics, and data visualization; the overall problem of big data and the tools and techniques designed to manage it; and the ways in which strategic analytics and visualization can be utilized in different fields and industries to have a strategic impact on an organization’s competitive advantage in today’s business environment. The course will also address the future path of big data management, analytics and visualization, including career options and outlook.

This course introduces user interface design principles and concepts of user-centered design. User interface concepts for web, desktop and mobile applications are practiced in a variety of design projects. Universal design concepts, accessibility design, navigational schemas and elements of screen design are also discussed.

Information Architecture (IA) is defined as “the art and science of organizing and labeling shared information environments (websites, intranets, online communities and software) to support usability and findability.” (source: iainsitute.org). This course balances theoretical grounding of IA with practical design work. We will cover principles of IA as a professional practice and how to design effective, research-supported, user-centered information systems. Students will understand and apply information organization concepts; design and apply appropriate assessment techniques for particular information environments; and develop strategies to effectively communicate design rationale and advocate for users.

Human-centered design depends on a deep understanding of user goals, needs, and behaviors that only user research can provide. This course will introduce students to key qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, including surveys, interviews, and usability testing. A range of research approaches will be covered, including moderated vs. unmoderated; formative, iterative, and summative; as well as lab, field and remote studies. Key statistical and ethical concepts will be explored in the context of applied research challenges.

The goal of this course is to build practical interaction design and problem-solving skills. Students will be exposed to a toolkit of methods for every stage of the design process, from brainstorming and sketching through prototyping at various levels of fidelity. Throughout the course, students will practice divergent and convergent thinking necessary to solve real world design problems within the context of a collaborative and user-centered process.

The goal of universal design is to build products and interfaces that are usable and accessible to everyone, not just a small subset of normative or ‘average’ users. This course will provide an introduction to universal design for digital and physical accessibility. Students will gain an understanding of the range of physical, cognitive, contextual, and social disabilities that challenge technology users, and how inclusive design benefits everyone. Topics covered include accessibility guidelines, assistive technologies, plain language, and legal and ethical considerations.