Media UG Single Honours Joints Portfolio Review

Media UG (Single Honours & Joints) Portfolio Review Stage 2

BA Media & Communications (BA Media Studies - Single Honours) Joints: BA Media & a Language BA Media & Cultural Studies

Student Profile: who are our students? (2011 entry) • Our standard offer is ABB; most students have taken Media Studies at ‘A’ level • 53 students are taking Media Studies as single honours; • 21 students take the joint Media & Cultural Studies; 19 take Media joints not owned by MFM • Nationality: 60/74 HEU; 14/74 O/s, 57 female, 17 male

Single Honours - Programme Aims • A distinctive intellectual framework that combines critical, creative and conceptual approaches • A broad and well informed awareness of the historical, cultural and institutional contexts of media and communications • An understanding of the significance of media and communications in making social, political and personal experiences • A knowledge of how debates and practices in media and communications relate to wider real-world economic, political and social concerns

Joint Honours with Language: Programme Aims • Enables students to engage with the complexity of contemporary media culture and develop expertise in any area of the media industries, whilst at the same time studying a language at Sussex and during a year abroad. • Offers an excellent knowledge of media forms from film to TV and radio, photography and digital media. • Equips students with an understanding of how media texts are produced, distributed and consumed in the context of different national and global cultures.

Joint honours with Cultural Studies: Programme Aims • Offers an intellectual framework in which to examine the histories, institutions, technologies, forms and meanings of the media. • Provides a broad awareness of the contested nature of culture, including the diverse historical implications of that term. • Equips students with an understanding of how media practices and representations relate to questions of cultural politics.

Learning, Assessment & Feedback • Study skills embedded level 1: critical reviews, online contributions, presentation, essay, quiz, blogs • Beginning to research skills level 2: searches, learning logs/diaries, library liaison • Developing research skills level 3: workshops, use of digital resources, archives, research methods, ethics, formulating creative and critical questions, research planning • Formative and summative assessment feedback at all stages. Accented at mid-year one, start and mid-year two and start and mid-year three.

Issues/challenges • Delivery to an international and multi-level constituency • Liaison with Study Group • ‘Value’ issues re: Media studies general status • Rapidly changing field and variable expectations