Media Practice MA 2021/22 entry

• 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.

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.