MODULES
Foundation Year
CORE MODULES
Academic Development
This module will provide students with the opportunity to identify the skills, competencies and experience required for successful development to embarking on their university degree and successfully completing it and progressing on to a range of potential future career areas.
Central to the developmental process is for each student to cultivate the reflective skills, openness and self-awareness to enable themselves to assess what they are doing, identify areas for improvement, and confidently receive and give constructive feedback.
Narrative and Creativity
This module will provide students with the opportunity to identify the skills and knowledge necessary to create oral, visual and written narratives for all kinds of media production. This module aims to give students the theoretical understanding of narrative and creativity. Throughout the module students will be encouraged to consider how these theories shape their chosen subject. Students will be assessed on their ability to present their understanding of narrative theories and give supporting examples of how these apply to various forms of media.
Group Film Project
Students will develop fundamental digital media production skills required to make a film. Over this course of this module, students will work in groups to research and produce a short fiction or non-fiction film for online distribution. Students will also have the opportunity to reflect (critically evaluate) on their own practice in relation to the main topics covered during the module; including professional practice.
Social Media Project
The module will develop basic individual research and production skills for social media content. Students will also develop their reflection and evaluation skills. Throughout the module students will create new content for a social media account relating to their chosen subject pathway, or topic of interest. Students will also be encouraged to consider current issues and debates surrounding social media.
Ways of Looking
This module will introduce students to how meaning is made and transmitted in visual texts. Students will be introduced to the various ‘ways of looking’ (frameworks) at media, and how this is applies to current media examples. Students will be expected to conduct their own research and encouraged to consider how the ‘ways of looking’ at media can be applied to their own subject specific pathway.
Students will also learn how to apply key composition and aesthetic (typography, colour, and layout) skills to their own work in the form an academic poster using industry standard software.
Mental Wealth: Professional Development
This module will provide students with the opportunity to identify the skills, competencies and experience required for employment and employability and how employability and industry connections are implemented in the curriculum.
You will begin to recognise the areas for your own personal professional development (including emotional, social, physical, cultural and cognitive intelligences) through taught and workshop activity.
Central to the developmental process is for each student to cultivate their reflective skills through collaboration with other undergraduate students and analysing effective approaches to industry briefs and creative problem solving.
Year 1
CORE MODULES
Narrative 1: Narrative Fiction
This module examines forms of narrative and storytelling in the context of traditional and interactive media.
Case studies from various media such as television, cinema, gaming and social media are presented.
Narrative theory, such as the conventions of plot and character development, the representation of narrative action and the use of digital media are taught, culminating in a media production piece that embodies the theories and concepts students have learned.
Documentary 1: Documentary and Representation (Creative Writing)
The module equips students with an understanding of how to engage with a wide range of themes through documentary forms. The module provides a context for documentary practice and problematises categories of representation, notions of 'truth' and 'realism' and facilitates civic engagement and involvement with the East London community.
Aesthetics and Technologies 1: Practice as research
This module will provide students with the opportunity to experiment with and explore a range of techniques and crafts in collaborative and multi-platform projects. They will be introduced to aesthetic practices, concepts and technologies used in the external world with a view to informing this experimentation. Industry professionals will be invited to collaborate in this process via a 'Masterclass' series of interactive workshops. Students will demonstrate their knowledge through an ability to critically reflect upon the results.
Media Cultures
This keystone module provides you with the contextual knowledge essential to your subject area. The module will introduce a range of perspectives on contemporary media cultures and landscapes to develop competencies appropriate to your field of study and to the world of work. The module will introduce you to core study skills and practices including how to identify, access, collate and evaluate evidence, understanding academic writing conventions and how to express a range of ideas through appropriate means of communication.
Professional life: Mental Wealth - Agency 1
Developing the key psychological and physical determinants of human performance is increasingly critical for successful graduate-level employment, entrepreneurship and career progression in the 4th industrial revolution.
This module will provide students hoping to work in the creative industries with the opportunity to learn and apply the full range of skills, competencies and experience required for successful progression into in a range of potential future career areas.
Students will learn about conventions and expectations in the creative industries, focussing on areas specific to their programme of study. They will also advance their own personal professional development through taught and workshop activities, and explore possible strategies to further develop their reflective skills and self-awareness.
Students will have opportunity to select an in-house microbusiness to join in the role of 'Apprentice'. In this position they will focus on the importance of research in the creative industries. Students will practice key methods including digital and other research and qualitative methods used in industry today, including trends, news coverage and customer reviews. Students will also learn the conventions of research and analysis in order to develop a pitch or proposal in response to a client brief.
Social Media & Branded Content Design
You will learn a range of established and emerging approaches from the field of digital media design and social media, and also engage with critical theory of digital and social cultures. The module will cover key subjects related to advertising and branded content including; brand identity; brand positioning; integrated marketing communications, emotional branding and user engagement and interactivity. You will formulate a digital media strategy in response to a brief that has engagement and interactivity at the heart of its production. You will work in groups to present a piece of media intended for social or digital dissemination and consider the role of audience engagement in its conception and production.
Year 2
CORE MODULES
Narrative 2: Advanced Narrative
This module provides the opportunity for students to develop their media narrative skills in a more advanced and professional context. Students will develop a project voicing themes of identity within contemporary culture. They will then be supported in key areas of project development and selection. Finally they will progress through all relevant stages of production. Narrative and conceptual structures will be delivered at a higher level than in Level 4 and technical support will be provided to enhance the students' craft skills relating to professional practice. The module will structure the development of key media skills as well as a deeper understanding of the creative process relating to the students' chosen narrative genre. The course will end with a peer group evaluation, enabling the students to critically reflect on their achievements a means of progression into Level 6.
Documentary 2; Experimental Documentary
This module aims to encourage you to experiment and develop a creative and critical approach to a range of media technologies. You will build on the practical and conceptual skills relevant to media production gained in previous modules and consider your own production work in relation to both historical and contemporary media practice. You will work to produce an experimental piece that incorporates exploration of different and imaginative ways to play with documentary form and content.
Mental Wealth: Professional life: Agency 2
Best learning experiences follow a 'learning by doing' approach followed by reflection and assimilation. Building upon the competencies and skills identified at level 4, this module supports effective professional development through practical experience.
You will work on live project briefs to produce media content which is informed by appropriate research in the field of study.
Professional understandings and skills sets will be furthered through practical work enabling you to strengthen key graduate skills such as teamwork, organisation skills, digital skills, effective communication, and professionalism.
Through reflective practice, you will evaluate your ongoing progress as a learner and as a practising professional.
Celebrity & Influencer Marketing
The growth of new media has generated new ways of representing, consuming and producing celebrity. This module focuses on celebrity and influencer branding to explore the use of social media as a strategic tool in audience and consumer engagement. The module looks at the history and intellectual frameworks of celebrity studies and the impact of social media on celebrity culture. Theories of social influence and symbolic and emotional branding will be explored to interrogate the contemporary relationship between social media, celebrity and branding. We will examine the rise of branded content and social media influencers as cultural intermediaries of taste and status in the 21st century through a case study approach which looks at for example fan cultures, beauty influencers and self-branding strategies in Instagram cultures. You will research, analyse and develop your own branded content strategies informed by the module themes.
Digital Research in Practice
Subject to validation
Year 3
CORE MODULES
Final Project Development
Subject to validation.
Final Project: Completion
The module will lead on from the development stage of your self-identified research project based on your preferred choice of production, for example a written dissertation that engages with contemporary debates in media or a complete practice project, produced through a developed programme of research supported by a verbal demonstration of the critical discourses it speaks to.
The aim of the module is to extend knowledge in the chosen field of research, to produce or write the project according to your planning and to complete and present the final research project within the given time frame. You will have the opportunity to demonstrate your skills in an accompanying project portfolio, including production folders for practice projects or reviews of existing academic literature on the written dissertation topic and a comprehensive bibliography.
Projects will be developed through subject-specific supervision and peer support.
Content Design & Execution
Subject to validation.
Self-Branding: Identity & Social Media
Subject to validation.
Aesthetics and Technologies 2: professional practices
The module provides an in-depth understanding of creative work cultures, and self-promotional strategies to help you establish personal branding for your own set of skills, experiences and practices. This module examines the Creative Industries and explores their organisation and institutional arrangements, their media forms, products and services, work practices and cultures. Here you will extend your skills, experience and self-awareness to prepare for a career in the Creative Industries through the application of learned skills to your career promotion and progression.
You will enhance your professional practice and self-branding skills set though a career development project which includes critical reflection and self-promotional strategies. The module provides an in- depth understanding of creative work cultures, and self-promotional techniques to help you establish personal branding for your own set of skills, experiences and practices.
Mental Wealth: Professional life: Agency 2
Best learning experiences follow a 'learning by doing' approach followed by reflection and assimilation. Building upon the competencies and skills identified at level 4, this module supports effective professional development through practical experience.
You will work on live project briefs to produce media content which is informed by appropriate research in the field of study.
Professional understandings and skills sets will be furthered through practical work enabling you to strengthen key graduate skills such as teamwork, organisation skills, digital skills, effective communication, and professionalism.
Through reflective practice, you will evaluate your ongoing progress as a learner and as a practising professional.
