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The Post Industrial Media Project is a collaborative teaching and learning research project undertaken by Adrian Miles, Allan Thomas, David Carlin, Glen Donnar, Paul Ritchard, Rachel Wilson and Seth Keen of the RMIT Media program.
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Media Industries 2 is a final semester subject in the Media degree and is focused on investigating pathways in relation to individual career objectives beyond the degree and at it's heart has a vocational focus. These objectives can include a career in the mainstream media and related industries, postgraduate research and involvement in emerging forms of media.
Media Industries 2 focuses on helping students to develop other skills and knowledge relevant to a career in the contemporary media industries such as: facilitating networking opportunities; how to survive as a freelancer; how to prepare and update a skills analysis, resume and portfolio; knowledge of key players in industry, how to promote themselves and their work.
The course is designed help students:
At the end of the course students should have:
It involves the ongoing development of a series of interconnected capacities or modes of practice, being (in no particular order):
There is only one collaborative task in MI2 which is self assessed and that is the organisation and hosting of the seminar series. The course has an individual focus designed to help the students identify pathways into their selected area of interest.
Students continue to engage with their student blog and are asked to submit a number of posts. The main post requires them to reflect upon and self assess their contribution to the seminar series.
The main way in which students engage with notions of creativity are through their career postfolios and in particular the showreel. They are encouraged to think strategically about how to present themselves and their creative output throughout the degree.
They continue to develop their applied research skills in the Personal Networking exercise. They must research the context in which their selected 'professional experts' operate and to locate them and seek an interview with them.
Critique is less visible in this subject but has appeared via the blogs in the form of reflections about the overstating of grades in relation to a perceived lack of contributions to the self assessment tasks.
Feedback occurs in the groups discussions surrounding the Personal Networking Report and the Career Portfolios.
Here is the rational for why we do it this way:
DESCRIPTION: Students produce an individual career portfolio that at a minimum must contain a CV and showreel/demo tape/website/blog that demonstrates to potential employees their creative literacy and technical capabilities across a range of media forms.
RATIONAL: A well written, appropriately presented and specifically targeted CV is often the first thing potential employers have that demonstrates the claims applicants make. Therefore it is important to get it right. Depending on the type of job being applied for (and, possibly, further higher education or specific technical training) applicants may also need to able to provide examples of work they have made. It is also useful for students to have a copy of the work you have completed throughout the degree.
DESCRIPTION: Building on research undertaken in Media Industries 1, students organise a seminar series where they invite industry experts to comment on a series of key issues affecting the media, further developing their networking, negotiation and project management skills as well as their industry knowledge.
Students submit an individual contract describing their intended primary and secondary contributions to the event and then self assess against these plus reflect on their learning outcomes at the end of the semester.
RATIONAL: A well written, appropriately presented and specifically targeted CV is often the first thing potential employers have that demonstrates the claims you make. Therefore it is important to get it right. Depending on the type of job you may be applying for (and, possibly, further higher education or specific technical training) you may also need to able to provide examples of work you have made.
2006 Media Industries Day 2007 Media Industries Day
DESCRIPTION: The presentation format and style of this report is individually negotiated with tutors and is intimately related to the career ambitions as articulated in their Career’s Portfolio. The report must contain evidence of a minimum of two interviews with professionals working in their chosen field of the Media Industries and reflect the equivalent of a minimum 3,000 words.
RATIONAL: Finding work in the professional media industries is dependent on a number of factors. These include; contacts, experience, confidence, skills and knowledge. This assignment is designed to help students to further develop contacts, confidence and knowledge.
At it’s most basic this assignment is an opportunity to make contact with industry professionals in the specific area they would like to pursue and get info on how to best approach finding work etc. However it is also an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and to position themselves as an expert in a particular area of interest. It is a chance to locate themselves ahead of the competition and to make themselves visible as someone who has the skills, knowledge and experience to begin work immediately.
In the past instead of seminars we have had a single day symposium, called Media Industries Day. However for 2008 we will running a series of seminars. This reflects feedback from the last few years where students found there were not enough jobs to go around and many people under participated and over stated their contributions.
Another problem we continue to face is how to fully implement the degree wide philosophy in relation to peer and self assessment. The nature of the assessment tasks and the submission schedule makes it difficult to self/peer assess any other task other than the self assessment task. This is something we continue to grapple with.