Digital Innovation Class

As part of the Dallas Morning News Innovation Endowment, we teach a digital product development capstone course each semester. The cross-disciplinary course includes students from across campus working on teams to create innovative media products. Teams have built products for The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times, Univision, The Austin American-Statesman and others. 

The class is structured to teach the students how to bring a digital product to fruition. Students are taught principles of design-thinking, and we use those methods to come up with product ideas and to develop them. They also learn about how to find the “market fit” for their product, how to plan out a roadmap and how to present their ideas. They also come up with a marketing plan and extensive documentation. Our goal is to create journalists who can help invent the future when they get into newsrooms.

The course is taught by Innovation Director Robert Quigley, who is also a professor in the School of Journalism. Christian McDonald, a senior lecturer in the School of Journalism, is helping out in the course with data and coding projects, funded by the Innovation Endowment.