Medical Futures Lab courses include:
ENGL 386 “Medical Media Arts Lab“ (Spring 2014), led by @KirstenOstherr and @Doctor_V, with extra help from Matthew Wettergreen, Tracy Volz, & Allison Hunter. Our incredible lineup of “problem-owners” includes Fred Trotter, Aanand Naik, Mike Fisch, Craig Nichols, Paul Checchia, Ron Bronicki, Stephen Igo, & Jane Grande-Allen. Medical Media Arts Lab is a new hands-on critical thinking and design class for students with arts, media, writing, design & programming interests or skills who would like to apply and refine their abilities by tackling real-world problems with physicians & patients in the Texas Medical Center who want help visualizing information for health communication.
ENGL 278 “Medicine in the Age of Networked Intelligence” (Spring 2013) led by @KirstenOstherr and @Doctor_V. Our students did much of their thinking in public via our course tumblr. This course imagines and predicts the future of medicine at its evolving intersection with technology. Examines how developments in mobile, social, personal and global health are transforming medical research, communication, practice. Emphasis on active learning through hands-on creative projects. Topics include social media, quantified self, big data, ethics, doctor-patient relationship.
ENGL 273 “Medicine and Media” (Fall 2012) led by @KirstenOstherr and @Peter_Killoran. This interdisciplinary course explores the role of imaging technologies in the practice of medicine, and the role of mass media in shaping our understandings of the body, health, and disease. The proliferation of screen technologies such as film, television, Internet, and video games has led researchers to identify media literacy as a critical component of both medical training and public health intervention. Simultaneously, healthcare is increasingly promoted and delivered through imaging technologies. We will examine the historical foundations of these interrelated developments and students will develop a framework for better understanding the potential positive and negative impacts of visual images in medical contexts. Students will analyze their positions as media consumers and develop skills necessary for producing ethical images and information about bodies, health, and disease. Some emphasis on gender and race in representation and treatment in the clinical setting. Examination of how visual media structure “ways of seeing” for physicians and public. Emphasis on developing media literacy skills; new section on medicine and web 2.0.