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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Convergent Media Industries
This module provides you with a broad understanding of the ways in which different media industries have developed, the way they have been structured, organised and controlled, and the ways they have developed relationships with audiences, users and co-creators. The module introduces you to the field of media, marketing and communication studies through an analysis of the development and transformation of communication industries, practices and forms. The module addresses themes of digitalisation, convergence and globalisation. Methods of theorising the relationship between technology, the media, culture and society are also explored by examining innovation and change in the production, distribution and consumption of news and entertainment media including publishing, radio and television, film and recorded music. This module provides you with ways of thinking about the transformation of the media industries and is designed to contextualise contemporary debates about the organisation and performance of digital, mobile and social media. This module also complements your skills modules by developing your critical reading, essay writing and independent research skills.
Year 2
CORE MODULES
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.
Employment and Enterprise
This module prepares students for employment in the creative industries and enables self-reflection on career progression.
Students will develop and enhance their employability and enterprise skillset in preparation for graduate employment opportunities.
Students will complete a Career Development Project which includes a work placement.
This will be a self-directed project which they will research and undertake individually, in discussion with the tutors.
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.
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.
Digital Research Methods
This project-based module introduces a range of social and media research approaches and methods appropriate to the study of media and its audiences. You will develop skills in the traditions of qualitative and quantitative research practices, including survey, content analysis and ethnography. The emphasis will be on emerging methodologies designed to research the digital world and social media platforms. Preparing students for independent research at level 6, the module will examine contemporary research approaches addressing media practice, digitalisation and participation to assess the complexities, usefulness and limitations of the practice of research, and its uses and applications within academic scholarship, industry and society.
Photographing the city
The module introduces approaches to contemporary photography to use as a method of practice-research in exploring one's own practice. You will learn psychogeographical approaches to understanding the city to apply to a photographic collection of work, informed by the principles of street photography. You will create and pitch a spreadable campaign promoting 'My London' drawing on personal experience of the city.
European and World Cinemas
This module offers the opportunity to engage with the historicity of a cinema's aesthetics by exploring a range of national cinemas. You will be encouraged to familiarise yourselves with aspects of different national film industries, and to relate their historically specific modes of operation to the generic categories and stylistic features of the films these industries produced at different times in their history. Above all, you will be expected to engage with the history of diverse geographical areas and to consider how the films examined relate to those broader socio-cultural contexts.
Celebrity and Influencer Marketing
Subject to validation.
OPTIONAL MODULES
Optional placement
This course offers the opportunity of year-long placement between years two and three. If you choose to take this option, you’ll spend your third year on a placement with a relevant company or organisation, adding valuable practical experience to your growing academic knowledge.
The extra placement year means it will take four years to complete your studies, instead of three.
Year 3
CORE MODULES
Final Project Development
Subject to validation.
Final Project Completion
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 3 - Freelancing at UEL Creatives
This module is delivered as part of UEL’s creative agency, UEL Creatives, where students will work on live projects that will develop their employability skills and give them experience of working with industry.
Students can apply for a range of projects suitable to their skill-set and will be matched to at least one project as part of the unit. Working either individually or as part of a team to meet the brief set by a real client, students learn how to work as a freelancer and manage their own workload.
This will include practical information such as how to manage intellectual property as well as best practice on communicating with clients, working as a team and planning for the future.
In addition, students will be required to reflect on the experience, helping them to develop key enterprise skills including reliance and problem-solving.
PR, Promotion and Publicity
Subject to validation.
Understanding Digital Cultures
Students will learn the social, economic and technological developments that have combined to produce the modern ‘prosumer’ and critically assess the dynamics in play when people use social media, increasingly in immersive environments. This critical approach to examining user contexts allows us to identify a series of ethical questions and the potential of data harvesting in the pursuit of new consumers.
Students with gain an understanding of social media’s commercial purposes, and an awareness of how the pervasive appeal of these platforms raise a broader set of questions regarding the deployment of technological innovation in a world transnational in character.
Transmedia and Digital Futures
In this module, you will examine various theories both on transmedia storytelling as well as on complex narratives that underpin these types of intercompositional narratives, analysing the impact of convergence culture on the way in which we produce and consume media.
The module encourages you to employ experimental and imaginative approaches to concept, process and final realisation of your projects - skills essential to the creation of digital artworks and to the creative industries in general. It also provides you with a greater awareness of the creative context in which to locate their work. You will produce a transmedia narrative working across multiple platforms and formats, including but not limited to video, sound, music, animation, and photography.
