Overview
The MA Media Practice has a focus on creativity and production with the intention of building new expertise in new media created with fast developing emergent tools. This highly innovative course is at the forefront of using emergent forms while demonstrating a critical stance toward them.
Designed to develop the skills required for the ever-changing, fast developing new media landscape, this exciting course fosters individuality, confidence and creativity. Focusing on the processes of making and critiquing media that is socially, politically, economically and ethically engaged, students are equipped with an awareness of the contingencies of the latest practical, technological and theoretical developments within the profession.
The course has a strong international focus across its cohort, teaching staff, course materials and its ethos. Influences and interventions that focus on international aspects build strong employability in graduates who emerge with a unique skillset that make them attractive to future employers and organisations at every level.
You will experiment and develop new forms that take account of the analogue world and new digital tools that, when placed together, infer possibilities that are innovative, raise questions and have impact. The course will culminate into a self-directed Final Project or Dissertation, encouraging you to employ critical questioning and enabling you to take control of your education.
You have the opportunity to join our community of critical thinkers and makers, taught by staff who are themselves film makers, authors and artists, who continually challenge traditional and emergent practices in their own work.
The MA Media Practice frames the emergent through actively questioning how we have arrived at current media landscapes. The fundamental stance of the MA is the establishment of a space that encourages a critique of media through making media which is fully conversant with new hybrid forms.
Why Coventry University?
An award-winning university, we are committed to providing our students with the best possible experience. We continue to invest in both our facilities and our innovative approach to education. Our students benefit from industry-relevant teaching, and resources and support designed to help them succeed. These range from our modern library and computing facilities to dedicated careers advice and our impressive Students’ Union activities.
To ensure an optimised and continual student experience, the university may deliver certain contact hours and assessments via emerging online technologies and methods across all courses.
Global ready
An international outlook, with global opportunitiesEmployability
Career-ready graduates, with the skills to succeedStudent experience
All the support you need, in a top student cityAccreditation & Professional Recognition
Chartered Management Institute
As part of this course you will undertake a professional development module which is currently accredited by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) for the 2021-22 intake. Upon successful completion of the module, you will gain the CMI Foundation Charted Manager “fCMgr” at no additional cost.
Coventry University’s accreditation with CMI is currently ongoing for the relevant modules and is regularly reviewed and monitored by the CMI through their quality systems. Whilst Coventry University anticipates that these reviews will continue to be successful, if they were to be unsuccessful, the relevant module in this course would no longer be accredited and we would notify applicants and students of this change as soon as possible.
Related Links
Building Redevelopment
We are currently in the process of a major redevelopment of our Faculty of Arts and Humanities buildings. The building will be open to the public as well as students, and will feature an expansive gallery space.
Creative Community Hub
We hope that you are all staying safe in these uncertain times. Creative activities can really help fill the days, while we are spending more time at home and we have some ideas to keep you busy.
Virtual experience
Visit our online degree show where we have brought together the work of over 500 students.
Course information
The MA Media Practice has a focus on creativity and production with the intention of building new expertise in new media created with fast developing emergent tools. This highly innovative course is at the forefront of using emergent forms while demonstrating a critical stance toward them.
Designed to develop the skills required for the ever-changing, fast developing new media landscape, this exciting course fosters individuality, confidence and creativity. Focusing on the processes of making and critiquing media that is socially, politically, economically and ethically engaged, students are equipped with an awareness of the contingencies of the latest practical, technological and theoretical developments within the profession..
The course has a strong international focus across its cohort, teaching staff, course materials and its ethos. Influences and interventions that focus on international aspects build strong employability in graduates who emerge with a unique skillset that make them attractive to future employers and organisations at every level.
You will experiment and develop new forms that take account of the analogue world and new digital tools that, when placed together, infer possibilities that are innovative, raise questions and have impact. The course will culminate into a self-directed Final Project or Dissertation, encouraging you to employ critical questioning and enabling you to take control of your education.
You will have the opportunity to join our community of critical thinkers and makers, taught by staff who are themselves film makers, authors and artists, who continually challenge traditional and emergent practices in their own work. The MA Media Practice frames the emergent through actively questioning how we have arrived at current media landscapes. The fundamental stance of the MA is the establishment of a space that encourages a critique of media through making media which is fully conversant with new hybrid forms.
Modules
We regularly review our course content, to make it relevant and current for the benefit of our students. For these reasons, course modules may be updated.
In more detail...
The course has a distinct ethos, which is geared towards providing an exceptional student experience. Being taught by new media practitioners, the course places emphasis on experiential learning and students’ own practices. Students on the course are part of a community of critical makers experimenting with emergent media forms. All student work is outward-facing, facilitating opportunities to produce media that is socially engaged. With a focus on creativity and innovation, the course foregrounds the development of the skill set that contemporary media practitioners need within the broad scope of the digital media industries. .
This course will sit as part of a new cluster approach to postgraduate provision in the School of Media and Performing Arts, with a new central course structure that spans several MA programmes. The model establishes a shared ethos and identity for postgraduate study in the school, providing a greater shared community experience, presence and visibility for PG students. The MA programme cluster is centred on a flexible model that allows 3 points of entry across the academic year. You will benefit from expert teaching in your chosen field as well as meaningful connectivity with research and practice expertise from across broader media and production disciplines. Students from across programmes will collaborate on project-oriented modules for a total of 30 credits allowing natural interdisciplinarity and promoting a greater contextual understanding of your chosen specialism within the broader media sectors. Via these collaborative project modules, you will engage directly with the application of your chosen discipline in a variety of contexts including the commercial application of your ideas, the creation of tools that aid international sustainable development and initiating work that empowers communities to tackle the social challenges of the 21st Century.
- The course is taught by practitioners, all of the staff engaged on the course are themselves practitioners within new media fields. This includes an innovative project funded by Coventry City of Culture, using immersive audio to capture the stories of refugee communities.
- The course places emphasis on experiential learning and offers a creative space in which experimental and innovative ways of working can be accommodated. It is based on critical practice and invites you to respond to the problems of media production now and how it has been shaped by key historical practitioners.
- The course has been instrumental in exploring software which is then introduced to the school and campus as a whole. The most successful iteration being the introduction of Klynt which is being used now by Media Production and Digital Media amongst others.
- All student work is outward facing; productions from every semester are shown publicly using our state of the art media base at The Tank. These regular screenings and actions ensure real life public reaction to the work produced that in turn influences practice in progress.
- You will have access to professional equipment via our dedicated Media Loan Shop and studios. The Media Loan Shop has state-of-the-art equipment including GoPro Camera kits, Cannon and Nikon Photographic and Video cameras (inc. DSLR), Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6K EF camera collection Edirol recorders, and a range of photographic lenses, lighting and filters (terms and conditions apply).
- Coming to study in a hugely diverse city which has been awarded the title of City of Culture 2021, meaning huge local investment and the chance to capitalise on the vibrant range of opportunities which this status will present in the run up, during and after the event, epitomised in the ten-year Cultural Strategy for Coventry.
| Opportunities to exhibit your work during the course in addition to our annual MA Degree Show. |
Your main study themes are:
- Critical Media Practice Identifying a contextual and critical framework that will inform the development of your own practice through comparing, evaluating and reflecting upon conventional media production and how your own work uses these conventions.
- Emerging Media Practices:: Focusing on a range of contemporary experimental approaches in combining audio with moving image creatively with new media interfaces.
- New Media Narratives: Constructing new forms of storytelling, through the combination of traditional screenwriting techniques with the affordances of digital technology.
The course is an inclusive individual journey of personal, technical and creative development for each student. You will share in the organic philosophy of the course and understand the relationship of the work to the intended outcomes at module and course level. This is explained at regular intervals. Assessment is used to develop your abilities. At the same time there is development of a group coherence. Staff ensure that all students engage and not just a core group by making sure each student presents and updates on their work development every week. As part of the MA programme cluster, you will encounter a broad range of large and small group teaching as well as dedicated one-to-one support.
A particular strength across the modules and the course as a whole is the centrality of your own practice and this is reflected in the assessments which focus on you developing your own practice within a wider critical and contextual understanding of New Media Practice. This results in many students achieving high marks as they are fully engaged in the work and understand its relevance in terms of their own professional development. It also supports many students having a transformational experience during the course through engaging with a wide range of emerging practices, which they may be exposed to for the first time.
This course aligns with the Six Pillars of the University Education Strategy in the following ways:
- Research inspired teaching is provided thought the high-profile research of staff across the course. You will be encouraged to learn in an increasingly uncertain and rapidly evolving technological landscape. Graduates will possess a unique set of hybrid skills that will place them well in the competitive and evolving digital marketplace and be informed by the research and applied practice of staff at Coventry University. Research inspired teaching is evident in modules such as Critical Media Practice and Emerging Media Practice.
- Embedded employability is a core aim of the course, in terms of supporting students who upon graduation are able to function as creative professionals within the broad scope of the digital media industries. The course will actively seek to engage you in industry-based work simulations as well as enabling credit for working on collaborative and co-creation projects. It will engage you with different approaches to creativity and problem solving. Of particular relevance to this pillar is the module Final Project (Production and Sharing).
- Creativity and enterprise are reflected in the engagement of emergent media technologies. You will learn how to synthesise your thinking and work as multidisciplinary collaborative producers, seeing digital tools as your palette and the digital media landscape as your canvas. You will approach digital practice as a craft and art that can be underpinned and evidenced through the application of theory. Enterprise is most evident in the Project Module, whereby you undertake a live brief while engaging with local companies’ needs.
- Intercultural and international engagement is fundamental to the course and is reflected in the course content on a modular basis. The integration of your own background as part of the production is embedded in the course. These skills and competences are extended into the external world through a series of live, field-based projects (eg. on the modules Emerging Media Practice and collaborative Project Modules) and assignments which introduce you to the demands of operating within the external world, both nationally and internationally, and encourage you to think globally about the applications and implications of your practices.
- Community contribution and responsibility is integral to the course and take a central role in placing you in a position of moral and ethical responsibility when engaging with the public. This takes place as part of the field trips but also within your Final projects. On the emergent media skills development level this is inquiry-led practice that encourages experimentation, risk taking and play in an increasingly complex digital media landscape. This links to modules such as Emerging Media Practice.
- Innovation and digital fluency will be achieved by engaging you in Critically Informed Digital Media practice and Experiential Learning. This course will be underpinned by the Media Literacy Skills outlined in the white paper ‘Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century’: Play, Performance, Simulation, Appropriation, Multitasking, Distributed Cognition, Collective Intelligence, Judgment, Transmedia Navigation, Networking and Negotiation. Finally, the Research Methods Module is undertaken in a blended format, with elements of on campus and online delivery, further developing digital literacy
This course will be assessed using a variety of methods which could vary depending upon the module. Assessment methods include practical projects and portfolios, artefacts and dissertations.
The Coventry University Group assessment strategy ensures that our courses are fairly assessed and allows us to monitor student progression towards the achieving the intended learning outcomes.
On successful completion of the course you will be able to:
- Demonstrate the ability to work creatively and effectively within a range of emergent media forms;
- Demonstrate the technical, organisational and creative skills required to function as an independent digital media practitioner in an international context;
- Think critically and reflexively about the full range of factors that impinge upon creative activities within digital media;
- Apply specialist knowledge in order to engage in new media practices in the field with communities of interest reflecting local, national and international concerns;
- Engage in radically challenging media practice through continuing innovative approaches of engagement and impact;
- Apply a continuing experimental approach to hybridity between conventional and new media forms to creatively interrupt entrenched conventions.
In a typical week you will have around 8 ‘contact’ hours of teaching. This generally breaks down into a mixture of lectures, seminars and practical workshops each week with focused tutor contact.
The contact hours may be made up of a combination of face-to-face teaching, individual and group tutorials, and online classes and tutorials.
As an innovative and enterprising institution, the University may seek to utilise emerging technologies within the student experience. For all courses (whether on-campus, blended, or distance learning), the University may deliver certain contact hours and assessments via online technologies and methods.
In addition, you will be expected to undertake a further 300 hours of self-directed study each semester, e.g. working on course assignments, group project activities, reading and maintaining your own public facing digital profile.
The course equips you with the creative, technical and professional skills to pursue a global career in illustration and animation with staff drawing on their own experiences of having worked and exhibited throughout the world.
Global ready
Did you know we help more students travel internationally than any other UK university according to data from the experts in higher education data and analysis, HESA?
In 2018/19, we were able to provide a total of 5,469 experiences abroad that lasted at least five days.
Much of this travel is made possible through our Global Leaders Programme, which enables students to prepare for the challenges of the global employment market, as well as strengthening and developing their broader personal and professional skills.
Explore our international experiences1st for
International experiences
Sending more students overseas than any other UK uni 2016/17
5,469
Student experiences
The number of student trips abroad for at least 5 days in 2018/19
12,000
and counting
The number of students we’ve helped travel internationally since 2016
12
global programmes
As well as trips, we offer other opportunities like language courses
Entry Requirements
Tuition Fees
We pride ourselves on offering competitive tuition fees which we review on an annual basis and offer a wide range of scholarships to support students with their studies. Course fees are calculated on the basis of what it costs to teach each course and we aim for total financial transparency.
EU student fees
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year remain eligible for the same fees as home students and the same financial support. Financial support comes from Student Finance England, and covers undergraduate and postgraduate study for the duration of their course, providing they meet the residency requirement.
For tuition fee loans
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year must have resided in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland for the three years prior to the start of their course. The purpose of that three year residency should not have been mainly for the purpose of receiving full time education.
For maintenance loans
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year must have resided in the UK and Islands for the five years prior to the start of their course. The purpose of that five year residency should not have been mainly for the purpose of receiving full time education.
Career prospects
Graduate Immigration Route visa
Based on current information from the UK Government, international students whose study extends beyond summer 2021 may be eligible for a visa under the UK Government’s Graduate Immigration Route, which will enable students to stay and work, or look for work, in the UK at any skill level for up to two (2) years. Check the most up to date guidance available to check your eligibility and any updates from the UK Government before making an application or enrolment decision.
The MA Media Practice provides you with the ability to be an adaptable media producer, able to move between roles in a media industry that values agility. You are equipped with the skills required to work for large organisations or smaller media production companies, or to work as a freelancer or independent media producer.
Over the years, we have developed and maintained excellent links with a wide variety of potential employers in the media and cultural industries. Coventry Talent team is on hand to offer tailored career and enterprise support if you wish to gain employment or take advantage of professional practice opportunities within course specific industries. Our dedicated Enterprise Officers also offer valuable assistance on how to begin as a freelancer/entrepreneur.
We are committed to preparing you for your future career and giving you a competitive edge in the graduate job market. The University's Talent Team provide a wide range of support services to help you plan and prepare for your career.
Where our graduates work
Graduates have gone on to work with international broadcasters, independent media producers and gone onto further media research. Recent graduates also work as lecturers and technical skills instructors.
Disclaimer
By accepting your offer of a place and enrolling with us, a Student Contract will be formed between you and the university. A copy of the 2020/21 Contract can be found here. The Contract details your rights and the obligations you will be bound by during your time as a student and contains the obligations that the University will owe to you. You should read the Contract before you accept an offer of a place and before you enrol at the university.
The tuition fee for the course that is stated on the course webpage and in the prospectus for the first year of study will apply. We will review our tuition fees each year. For UK and EU students, if Parliament permit an increase in tuition fees, we may increase fees for each subsequent year of study in line with any such changes. Note that any increase is expected to be in line with inflation. Following the UK’s exit from the European Union, EU students should be aware that there may be a change to UK laws following the UK’s exit, this may change their student status, their eligibility to study part time, and/or their eligibility for student finance. We will act in accordance with the UK’s laws in force in relation to student tuition fees and finance from time to time.
For International students the tuition fee that is stated on the course webpage and in the prospectus for the first year of study will apply. We will review our tuition fees each year. For international students, we may increase fees for each subsequent year of study but such increases will be no more than 5% above inflation.
