Digital Media BA (Hons)

Understanding how the digital has impacted the social, cultural, political, and economic landscape in contemporary society is crucial for digital media practitioners. This module aims to provide a broad introduction to contemporary issues underpinning digital media and digital technologies and theoretical approaches to their study. It is both concerned with the traditions of cultural studies enquiry and informed by more recent theoretical developments, all the while underpinned by a material, 'skills-informed' approach to research.

Compulsory

Content creation in digital media spans formats, from traditional cinema and video games to new and emerging technologies such as extended reality (XR). This module will explore how the intersection of media forms has created new ways to tell and circulate stories. You will analyse a range of approaches to contemporary storytelling, looking at how ‘official’ narratives are remixed, retold and circulated by fans. You will focus on narrative and discursive theory in relation to diverse storytelling forms, drawing on processes and examples from film, interactive media, gaming, immersive and participatory media.

Compulsory

Digital technologies have changed the way that marketing, communications and campaigning function, and have introduced new and evolving digital media approaches to these fields. This module will enable you to explore and use a range of concepts and practices from the area of digital marketing and campaigning. You will engage with live industry or community briefs for local, national, or international collaborators, and will explore the potential, pitfalls and possibilities of how the content creation industry has informed, changed and developed digital marketing within a contemporary digital society.

Compulsory

Immersive content creation across both traditional and experimental formats is a growing area of practice. This is an intensive real-world simulation module where you will build an extended reality (XR) cinematic or interactive experience from a mixture of original and acquired 3D assets, animations, captured audio and video footage, and recorded sound for programming within game engine for VR, AR, or projection mapping.

It builds on the skills acquired in your first year of creative technologies by enabling further development of your creative, communication and design skills and applying them to a real-world project. You will apply your accumulated experiences from your second year of studies to the planning and production of various artifacts within a specified timescale and in response to a specified brief. You will use this experience to further develop the skills – theoretical, contextual, practical, research and creative - that you have developed over the year to prepare for enquiry-led work that you will be undertaking in your final year.

Compulsory

Engaging in Professional Practice offers you the opportunity to develop skills and to foster flexible and adaptable approaches towards employment and professional opportunities. Where appropriate, you will be encouraged to start your digital media practice as the first step towards your professional career. You will be offered support in this process and will learn about managing yourself as a professional in the future, which will require you to adopt a portfolio career. You will develop your self-presentation skills including CV writing, effective interview techniques, and personal portfolios. You will explore organisations in creative industries and your preferred fields of practice.

Compulsory

In this module, you will work with students from courses across the School of Media and Performing Arts and/or industry collaborators, external groups or organisations to respond to an issue in the local, national or global community. You will work collaboratively with fellow students in defined roles that reflect industry practice in your area of study but will also develop skills in management and organisation by taking an active role in the project from start to end.

Compulsory

This module² provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved placement undertaken during your programme. A placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes.

Optional

This module² provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved international study/work placement undertaken during your programme. A work/study placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes.

Optional

This module enables you to deepen your critical understanding of the specificities of cultural, communication and media forms and the discourses surrounding them. The module focuses upon the relationship between the production and consumption of cultural, communication and media texts and explores the often-complex relationships between these 'texts', the determinants of their production, the narratives they convey and the meanings their audiences read into these narratives.

Compulsory

This is where you refine your identity as a digital media practitioner. In this module, you will build on the skills and reflection developed earlier in the course and the trajectory of your current practice. You will examine the breadth of possible digital media opportunities including organisational employment, freelancing, and writing creative grant applications for careers in digital media and creative technologies.

Compulsory

This module develops the research and development skills necessary to ideate, develop and propose a creative digital media project. Building on knowledge and skills acquired during the course you will use this module to develop a research proposal which will form the basis for your final media project.

The speculative futures are where these projects aim to exist, while being informed by creative, experimental and at times radical project development.

Compulsory

This module allows you to fully realise the role immersive technology and experimental praxis plays within digital media. This is a laboratory-style module designed to allow you to experiment with the latest immersive and interactive digital media technologies to facilitate cross-cultural and socio-political communication. The module takes advantage of resources from the university’s new immersive studio laboratories featuring the latest expertise in collaborative, computing and display technologies for data visualization, modelling, and simulation.

Optional

The Creative Application Design and Development module should prepare you for entry into the exciting and rapidly changing field of app development for a variety of platforms (mobile, web, other). You will bring to life a proof-of-concept experience that takes advantage of the growing technological advances within the mobile space such as WebGL, and augmented and virtual reality. The module allows for creative exploration in a variety of spaces such as multiplayer connected experiences, locative audio, augmented reality, immersive storytelling, 3D web design, pervasive medium, and interactive creations.

Optional

This module gives you the opportunity to gain and produce substantial practical and professional experience in one or more areas of digital media research and practice. You will further develop and realise the ideas generated within the Research: Speculative Futures and Digital Histories module. Your digital media project will culminate in an extensive body of work or practice using your chosen form, or forms, of specialist digital media practice and theory.

Compulsory