A desire to promote more social interaction and collaborative working has launched a new way for Media students to work towards their qualifications and enhance wellbeing at the same time.
Creative Industries Department staff – including Curriculum Manager Fi Milligan Rennie and lecturers Emma Macnair, Gavin Orr and Drew Tremlett - picked up on ‘Listen to Learners’ feedback before Christmas and noticed that students were missing working in groups on their creative projects.
This led to an online Christmas Party for the students and staff, involved with the HND course, held after returning in January which was received well, and a special project for the National Certificate Media Studies group who have created a radio show called ‘The Covid Sessions’.
Inspired by the creativity on display, staff specially designed a new brief for Project Week – 25-29 January – for the HND Media Studies and the BA Digital Media students to allow them to work together in groups to generate a multimedia production to be shared across Teams.
‘WHAT NOW’ encouraged students to draw on their pandemic experiences and take
inspiration from the BBC iPlayer/Netflix show ‘Staged’ to include: Video; Audio; Still Images; and Social Media inputs in their work, whilst at the same time playing it for laughs and being produced entirely online.
Fi Milligan Rennie, said: “We became aware that the Media students in particular were missing working together in groups on creative projects and my colleagues and I put our heads together to see how we could make the situation better for those on the course and the results have been great.
“Everyone has really enjoyed the creative process of coming up with ideas, writing scripts, taking photos like these ones and then recording their films. I am sure we will be doing more of this sort of thing while we continue working from home.”
Photos courtesy of Digital Media student Gregor Boyd.
