Digital Media BA

Program Overview

Through coursework in graphic design, programming, animation, and post-production, students develop a portfolio of practical projects and learn critical thinking, research, and analytical skills. The program also offers optional modules and a work placement opportunity, allowing students to tailor their degree to their interests and career goals. With industry-standard facilities and guidance from expert academics, graduates are well-equipped for careers in web design, social media analysis, content writing, and other digital media fields.

Program Outline

Digital Media BA - University of Leeds

Degree Overview:

This course offers a blend of theory and practice, teaching you all you need for a future in digital and interactive media. You'll build a portfolio of practical projects and learn to analyze the impact of digital media products on individuals and society. You'll have the opportunity to gain a range of technical skills using industry-standard software, including graphic design, programming, animation, and post-production, combining these with critical thinking, research, and analytical skills. Shape your degree to suit your interests and career plans through optional modules, whether they relate to creative or technical practice or theoretical analysis of digital media. You can even undertake a work placement to gain experience of this fast-changing sector.

Outline:

Year 1:

• Compulsory Modules:
• Introduction to Media and Communication Research (20 credits):
This module introduces the basic building blocks of media and communication research to support reading, writing, and research skills. It explores how media and communication is studied and how skills developed for a media and communication degree relate to both scholarly practice and media practice. It develops understanding of the cultural, political, economic, and technical contexts from which digital media have emerged.
• Interface Design (20 credits): This module aims to develop industry-standard best practice and skills in the design and creation of websites and other digital interfaces.
It illustrates the importance of international standards regarding usability and accessibility, as well as technological platform independence. The module explores how creative flair can be combined with industry standards to create professional quality products.
• Design for Digital Media (20 credits): Through the study of design concepts, contemporary design software, and the conventions of design for different types of media, you'll produce a varied portfolio of design work and analyze, evaluate, and reflect upon your work using formal methods of critique.
These tasks are intended to develop creative, technical, and analytical skills related to design and visual communication.
• Introduction to Media and Communication Theory (20 credits): This module examines some of the main theoretical perspectives and arguments that underpin the study of media and communication.
It considers the ways in which these perspectives are linked, why they continue to hold relevance for contemporary media scholars, and how they help us to understand the role of mediated communication in society.
• Optional Modules (selection of typical options shown below):
• The History of Communication (20 credits):
This module provides an overview of the main themes in the history of communication. It provides the historical foundation to examine the processes and case studies discussed in other Year 1 modules and should continue to inform your understanding as you progress through your degree.
• Camera and Editing (20 credits): This module provides a basic grounding in the language, conventions, techniques, and practices of micro-budget, mini-crew digital short video production.
It equips you with the skills needed to work with creative clarity and technical efficiency within a small production team, whilst in charge of at least one key production element.
• Introduction to Cinema (20 credits): This module equips you with a case study-based historical overview of the principal developments in US and European cinema, from 1895 to the present day.
Through a series of ten one-hour lectures and linked screenings, you'll be introduced to the form, culture, economics, and ideology of the moving image. Topics covered include early cinema, the emergence of the 'Classical' system, European art cinema traditions, the cinematic gaze, social cinema, film festivals, and film technologies.

Year 2:

• Compulsory Modules:
• One of either:
• Visual Communication (20 credits):
This module is designed to develop your visual literacy and enable you to read key visual texts, deploying a range of historical, critical, and contextual approaches. Over the course of this module, you'll study dominant visual cultural forms such as photography, cinema, television, and websites, developing the ways in which we try to understand these key modes of communication.
• Digital Media and the Senses (20 credits): This module introduces you to the visual and multisensory affordances of digital media using a variety of critical approaches which bring together theory and practice.
You'll identify critical issues through analysis of literature and media objects and respond to these through digital research and investigative creative projects. The concept of practice as research is explained and illustrated, and you're encouraged to think about the ways that you can respond critically though creative production.
• Working in Digital Media Teams (20 credits): This module introduces you to processes and issues in digital media work and production.
You'll work with your fellow students to respond to digital media briefs, developing project management skills and their ability to work collaboratively. The module is framed by theoretical understandings of work in the creative and digital media industries.
• Communication Research Methods (20 credits): An introduction to key research perspectives and methods in media and communication and to the principles of research ethics.
The module combines lectures, required readings, practical exercises in seminars to build skills, and assessments that promote reflection on the research process and the value of different research methods.
• Optional Modules (selection of typical options shown below):
• Technology in Communication and Media (20 credits):
This module provides you with an academic understanding of the role of technology in media and communications. It illuminates critical and social issues generated by and through technology, discussing and analyzing the relationship between technological developments and the societies in which those developments take place.
• Podcasting (20 credits): This module will equip you with the creative knowledge and practical skills needed to envision, plan, record, and produce your own podcast.
Designed for those with no prior experience of media production, you'll develop your critical appreciation of storytelling in audio through the study and critique of a variety of podcasting formats.
• Communications Skills (20 credits): You'll gain an understanding of the qualities associated with effective communication and will develop the confidence and practical skills needed to communicate effectively in a range of situations, including academic life, social contexts, and the workplace.
The module takes a rigorous critical approach to communication norms and requires all students to engage in a series of practical workshops in which they will be urged to think about and work upon their own confidence, verbal expression, and non-verbal behavior.
• Digital Storytelling (20 credits): Examining forms of digital storytelling in the context of traditional and interactive narrative, this module explores the role of digital storytelling in a range of social contexts.
You'll develop the skills to create multiform narrative and digital stories that use narrative as a means to educate and entertain.
• Digital Cultures (20 credits): This module explores the interactive leisure forms and practices that are based on, emerge from, and ask questions about, digital technologies.
It explores a range of themes and issues that relate to digital cultures, as well as looking at a range of digital cultures and the technologies and social contexts that facilitate the emergence of these cultures.
• Motion Graphics (20 credits): This module provides you with intermediate practical skills in motion graphics for film and television including animation and visual effects.
You'll gain the skills and knowledge needed to construct motion graphic sequences for film and television production using appropriate software, and understand and demonstrate coherent subject knowledge and appreciate professional design constraints for film and television production.

Year 3:

• Compulsory Modules:
• Internet Policy (20 credits):
This module is designed to examine Internet policy and the changing regulatory, legal, and ethical frameworks surrounding new media. Over the course of the semester, you'll cover a number of key contemporary policy issues and debates, including digital inclusion, accessibility, content regulation, privacy, security, copyright and digital piracy, free and open-source software production, and network neutrality. The aim is to introduce you to the key policy developments and debates in these areas, while also providing you with the critical tools with which to analyze and normatively evaluate them.
• Communication Dissertation (40 credits): This module provides you with an opportunity to undertake an independent research project and produce a dissertation on a topic of your own choice under the guidance of a supervisor.
Lectures introduce you to the research design and structure of a dissertation, including how to develop a research question, produce and organize a literature review, choose and apply a research method, analyze data, and present your findings and arguments. You'll receive individual tutorial support from an academic supervisor, but the emphasis is on independent study.
• Optional Modules (selection of typical options shown below):
You'll explore major stages in the development of documentary practice; criteria used in the evaluation of documentary both by academics and by the public; key visual and verbal components of documentary organization; narrative and observational structures in documentary; and current tendencies and new technology.
• International Communication (20 credits): This module explores the role of media and communication in the context(s) of globalization, with a special emphasis on the political and cultural implications of contemporary international/global communication practices and products.
The module offers both a traditional 'international communications' approach to the study and critique of media and a more contemporary take on the role of other forms of communication (eg design, branding, visual imagery and/or urban environments) in 'global communication'. As well as studying theories, examples, and cases, you'll develop your own original analytical and research work on specific dimensions of international/global communication.
• Placement (20 credits): You'll work under pressure in order to meet the exacting deadlines within a media or media-related industry.
You'll be required to prove the intellectual and practical capabilities you have acquired at University within the professional industry environment and under the scrutiny of working professionals. The placement assessment develops your ability to critically reflect on practice in your chosen field.
• Feminism, Identity and Media (20 credits): On this module, you'll be introduced to the main theoretical and critical arguments and approaches associated with feminist media studies, exploring both the history of the field as well as contemporary debates.
Through a series of ten one-hour lectures, you'll cover the key media and communication areas and issues including gender and new media, gender and television, gender and advertising, gender and PR, and gender and music. Topics covered include the politics of representation; feminist theories of narrative and identity; the role of women in the media industries and the relationship between feminism and new media. You'll consider the development of the concept audience, exploring empirical research and theoretical arguments from a range of perspectives including how scholars have conceptualised the audience, how media industries view the audience, as well as, addressing contemporary debates about the usefulness of the category ‘audience’ in the contemporary media context.

Assessment:

The program uses a variety of assessment methods to demonstrate different skills. These include practical production coursework, essays, and occasionally exams.

Teaching:

You'll learn under the guidance of academic teaching practitioners and researchers, using a range of teaching and learning methods to give you the knowledge and skills that you need. These methods will include practical classes and workshops, as well as lectures, seminars, and tutorials. In addition, you'll have a reading list for each module, and independent study is a crucial part of the degree, allowing you to develop your own skills and understanding. On this course, you'll be taught by expert academics, from lecturers through to professors. You may also be taught by industry professionals with years of experience, as well as trained postgraduate researchers, connecting you to some of the brightest minds on campus.

Careers:

Digital media communications play a vital role for almost every organization. This means career opportunities for graduates are rich and varied. Our graduates pursue a wide range of careers in media, including web design, social media analysis, content writing, online marketing, advertising, graphic design, project management, and e-commerce. Digital media lab.