Course overview

Mixing the creative and the technical in the context of digital storytelling, the BA Digital Media offers a space for students to experiment with a range of digital technologies, practices, processes, and theories.

Our responsive, creative curriculum allows students to address the rapid developments concerning the impact of new, emerging, and future media technologies and broader changes to the media and networked communications landscape. Students engage with games, film, audio experiences and more, creating, experimenting, researching and analysing the evolution of such fields. This approach results in thoughtful and sustainable digital media design, research, production, and professional practice across diverse areas of digital media.

The BA Digital Media course is different from a traditional programming or computer science course as its focus is primarily on creative production in the field of media using digital tools in 3D modelling and animation, code as a creative medium, immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, and audio and video production among others.

Our project-led approach supports students in becoming adept with a range of critical and creative media equipment and interactive technologies to inform their practice and understanding. The course focuses on laying a flexible foundation of skills which will prepare you for a changing digital and technological landscape. This means that students have the opportunity to work on real-world projects and address contemporary issues and challenges using the skills, knowledge and understanding they develop over the course.

In terms of skillset, our students develop aptitude in creative coding, augmented- and immersive virtual production, critical thinking around digital media, transmedia narrative development and digital marketing.

Students will benefit from a course that sees critical digital theory, immersive skills development, and professional practice as mutually exclusive, along with a university-wide commitment to collaborative learning and supporting sustainable global citizenship development.

On successful graduation, graduates can seek out roles in digital marketing and advertising, Internet of Things (IoT) development, UI/UX design and testing, app development and, increasingly, in augmented reality/virtual reality development.

Students will have the opportunity to collaborate with creatives across the creative industries through both formal and informal learning and extracurricular experiences.

What you'll study

The overall aims of the Digital Media course are to:

Encourage an active and imaginative approach to learning through the practice of digital media;
Equip students with an understanding of the nature of digital media within contemporary global and local situations as well as within a historical context;
Promote knowledge and understanding of the roles of digital communication systems, modes of representation and systems of meaning;
Develop a studentship which is embedded with strong principles of media professionalism and ethos of transferable and highly adaptable skills and knowledge;
Develop and encourage critical engagement with artistic, theoretical and intellectual paradigms appropriate to the area of digital media;
Foster a detailed understanding of contemporary patterns of, especially digital, production and consumption and circulation of media and cultural objects;
Facilitate opportunities and work which demonstrates effective manipulation of interfaces, the visual, sound and the written word;
Develop an understanding of, and practical skills in, a wide variety of research methods appropriate to the field of study;
Equip students to see their degree as transforming themselves personally and professionally but also as a means of affecting change in the wider media landscape.

The course responds to the 2030 Group Strategy. Additionally, the course provides opportunities for students to:

Collaborate with students on other courses through shared projects in, and beyond, modules;
Develop skills, knowledge and experience through the 'Graduate Attributes Framework' that informs teaching materials, curriculum design, assessment, and the working practices of staff and students.

Modules

Skills Lab - 20 credits

This module aims to develop your skills in a range of specialist fields through applied practice. It will introduce you to analogue and digital tools and methods used to produce artefacts in the creative industries. You will receive specialist skills training in your field of study.

Compulsory

Narrative and Storytelling - 20 credits

This module will investigate the effects of evolving forms of media and technology on storytelling across creative industries. It will examine traditional approaches to narrative in the context of new and emerging forms of storytelling such as games, virtual production, interactive web experiences, and immersive production. This module should enable you to think about the way that networked culture has enabled new forms of storytelling and creative design.

Compulsory

Hack Lab and Creative Play - 20 credits

This is an intensive real-world simulation module where you will address a live industry brief (either commercial, artistic, social or cultural) with a problem to solve. By the end of the module, you will create a ‘rapid prototype’ solution that can be presented to the client or wider public. You will learn project management techniques, working to a creative brief, collaboration and problem-solving, while applying specialist skills within a larger project.

Compulsory

From 2D to 3D Developing Visual Skills - 20 credits

This module explores complex specialist skills developed in the creative field of study. You should develop an understanding of professional approaches to processes through the application of skills. The focus of development will be on 2D and 3D visualisation and their application. You will also be introduced to personal development planning and supported to become reflective learners through seminar work.

Compulsory

Prototyping, Concept Development and Design - 20 credits

This module aims to encourage you to explore ideas development through practical exercises. This module will introduce you to problem analysis, including brainstorming, the use of genres within the creative industries, prototyping, virtual production, design elements and the synthesis of these skills within visualisation techniques and the presentation of these concepts to the given audience.

Compulsory

People, Pipelines and Productions - 20 credits

This module will introduce you to the contemporary creative industries landscape, exploring theoretical and professional foundations in the practice of digital design and development in games, digital media, animation, VFX, and related fields. The module will explore approaches to production within the context of the creative industries, focusing on roles and responsibilities, production processes, and pipelines and workflows.

Compulsory

Modules

Beyond the Digital Revolution: Contexts - 20 credits

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

Transmedia Storytelling and Immersive Design - 20 credits

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

Hacking the Immersive Pipeline - 20 credits

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

Digital Marketing and Content Creation - 20 credits

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

Engaging in Professional Practice - 20 credits

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

Creative Collaboration - 20 credits

Modules

The Politics and Failures of The Digital Revolution - 20 credits

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

Research: Speculative Futures and Digital Histories - 20 credits

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

Professional Digital Media Practice Portfolio - 20 credits

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

Final Major Project - 40 credits

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

Choose one module from these two options:

Immersive Production and Experimental Praxis - 20 credits

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.

Or:

Creative Application Design and Development - 20 credits

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

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.

How you'll learn

Teaching contact hours

The number of full-time contact hours may vary from semester to semester, however, on average, it is likely to be around 12 contact hours per week in the first and second year dropping to around 8 contact hours per week in the third and final year as you become a more independent learner. The contact hours may be made up of a combination of face-to-face teaching, individual and group tutorials, and online classes and tutorials.

Additionally, you will be expected to undertake significant self-directed study of approximately 12 hours each week, depending on the demands of individual modules.

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.

Assessment

This Course conforms to the Standard University Undergraduate Regulations (Mode E) at PSB Academy Singapore.

The Coventry University Group assessment strategy ensures that our courses are fairly assessed and allows us to monitor student progression towards achieving the intended learning outcomes.

Entry requirements

Contact PSB Academy

Fees and funding

Student	Full-time	Part-time
International	Contact PSB for fees per year	Not available

Careers and opportunities

On successful completion of the course a student will be able to:

Work creatively, effectively and independently within a range of digital media contexts and across a range of forms;
Demonstrate the skills – technical, creative, organizational, professional – required to function as a sustainable digital media practitioner;
Evidence a nuanced and sophisticated theoretical understanding of how digital media has come to inform societies, cultures and individuals;
Demonstrate critical analysis of the full range of factors that impinge upon professional and creative activities within digital media;
Work collaboratively at local, regional, national and/ or international level and demonstrate their understanding of the broader global context in which they work;
Produce highly creative and stimulating work in digital media that is informed by, and engages with, the current media and creative industries landscape.

Digital Media BA (Hons)

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Course code

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Course overview

What you'll study

Modules

Modules

Modules

How you'll learn

Teaching contact hours

Assessment

Entry requirements

Fees and funding

Careers and opportunities

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Digital Media BA (Hons)

Course features

Location

Duration

Course code

Start date

Course overview

What you'll study

Modules

Modules

Modules

How you'll learn

Teaching contact hours

Assessment

Entry requirements

Fees and funding

Careers and opportunities