MDST 3500

I took this class two years ago and I'm still thinking about it. Kevin Driscoll is such a wonderful professor. He is so nice and he's really passionate about the history of the Internet so it made potentially dry information actually really interesting and fun. Readings are long but I think they were on par with other 3000 level media studies classes. The information is pretty technical but I found it fascinating and the structure of the class was not difficult. As long as you read and have a basic understanding of the material you will do well! I recommend for anyone at UVA, not just media majors. Just be ready to learn about real Internet history...like 1950's style. I loved it. would take it again.

I really enjoyed this class! I thought I knew a decent amount about the internet and the history of computing before I took this class and was so fascinated by how much I learned! The readings are pretty long and technical, and it definitely helps to have a basis of understanding before you come into this class. Midterm and final were open note, open-internet, and one was take home. I found it all very interesting material and enjoyed participating in class. Above all, Professor Driscoll is incredibly nice and excited about the material, which always made me excited for class. Highly recommend for students of any major.

Love Professor Driscoll he literally makes this class what it is. The weekly reading is pretty dense, but if you just skim it for the pop quizzes you should be fine. There is a ton of extra credit and the class is really interesting in itself. The midterm was open web in class written, not too hard. Overall enjoyable class but not mindless for sure.

I liked this class, especially because it's an interesting subset of history I didn't know much about. there is some technical stuff, but you only really have to understand the super basics of it for the class. you have to do a couple projects, but there's no papers, and the two exams (a midterm and a final) are open note and open-Internet. this doesn't necessarily make them easy, but if you understand the readings and the course themes and go to lecture and take notes, you should be fine. sometimes it's a good amount of work, but it's not usually that hard.

I really liked professor Driscoll, but this class didn't interest me much at all. I really underestimated how technical this class would be. I was interested in talking about the history of the internet from a period of when I was born (thats obviously not too long ago), but we talked really early and in the last week of class we are finally getting to more recent things that I somewhat understand. It can be super interesting if someone enjoys this kind of stuff, but for me I really wasn't interested in the bulk of the content. Couldn't go wrong taking it or not taking it, but you have to go most of the time because it's a small class.