Stacey is one of our Media lecturers based at the Stirling campus and she’s an excellent example of how you can study whilst balancing the challenges of motherhood. After having her baby boy, just three months before graduating from our integrated BA Digital Media degree, delivered in partnership with the University of Stirling, her newborn son became her 1am study buddy!
You teach in the Department of Creative Industries, Hospitality & Tourism, what made you decide that you wanted to go into lecturing in this area?
Actually, it was my experiences as a student at the College that made me want to pursue lecturing as a career. I came in as a mature student and saw the difference it made to my life and wanted to help others achieve their dreams, goals and grow as individuals. I was in my second year at College when I started planning how to finish my degree and become a lecturer myself.
College is an amazing place to find out who you truly are, no matter your age, gender or socio-economic background.
Your department offers some very popular courses, can you tell us why this is a good sector/career to get into?
Any vocation you can think of will have an element of digital media – from the self-employed to the big corporations, everyone needs multi-media content to promote their business. The Creative Industries are exciting, fast paced, and forever changing and Media is the outlet for most of them. If you want to be part of something fun and interesting choose one of our courses!
What are the entry level job opportunities that our students would have upon successful completion of a course in your area?
Our two main courses at HN level offer a good foundation of practical skills – meaning that when our students graduate they are ready to work. They could work in entry level jobs in video production, podcast making, photography, social media marketing, or even work free-lance in any media field they choose.
Students on our NC level courses often progress onto one of our HN level courses
What kind of opportunities would there be to go on to university or to start an apprenticeship?
The HND is more practically focused than the partnership degree programme. Students on our HND Media course often go straight into work or progress to university also, where the skills they learned with us bolster their studies and give them unique insights over those who have purely theoretical learning.
Our department offers a partnership degree programme in Digital Media with the University of Stirling, and this two years at college and two years at university format ensures the students a basic practical ability skill set combined with strong theoretical frameworks of knowledge. Once they progress to the university they then strengthen these skills and knowledge at a higher level of academic learning. (I myself am a graduate of this very course!)
Colleges are a great place for our students to start their learner journey mainly because of the lecturing staff and the knowledge and skills you pass on and the level of support you can give students. How do you manage to instil interest and passion in the courses you teach?
Due to the fact our courses are media related, they are inherently exciting anyway, but each lecturer has their own styles for ensuring continued engagement and enthusiasm from their students. My particular style is using frequent group work, to ensure students have the opportunity to form communities with their peers. I also like to use a lot of interactive tools within my learning to make sure the students don’t feel passive in the process of it all. We do mini-projects, we do online live quizzes, we use online collaboration spaces and I make sure my students know how to ask for help. This has become so important over the last year, when we might not see a furrowed brow or any of the other indicators that used to set our teachers’ intuition off.
Describe your experience at Forth Valley College in three words…
Community, Collaboration, Caring.
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