Higher Education

Higher Education and The Media Student's Book (MSB)

All editions of The Media Student's Book, and now this website, are suitable for both pre- and post-18 media study (usually called HE or 'higher' education). This section of the website explains the differences and the linkages between the two areas and MSB.

It's hard to generalise about HE. A quick search on UCAS, the official British university admissions body, brought up 1,118 degree courses with 'media' in the title in 2004. HESA, the Higher Education Statistics Agency, in 2005 listed the number of students studying Media in the UK as 20,045 in full-time degree courses.

• These courses can vary from degrees, or parts of degrees, working primarily in theoretical ways, to ones which have varying amounts of practical content in all kinds of media - video production, animation, radio and so on.
• You will not be working with a standard syllabus, as you do pre-HE, though there are as many different ways of being assessed as in pre-18 education.
• Most degree courses are now organised into 'semesters' - two longish blocks of study, usually from September/October to January/February, and January/February to June. But even this does not apply everywhere.

Does HE involve different ways of studying? How does MSB relate to that?

HE media courses develop your knowledge of the media, and your ability to produce within the media, which is recognised as a key part of modern life. But, like most degrees, they also develop your general ability to think coherently, write cogently, research and discuss competing theories, and produce media work with an awareness of all of those skills. This kind of thinking is one of the 'transferable skills' which many degrees mention as an aim.

Other specifics of HE:

• you may experience large lectures for the first time
• but you should also experience smaller seminar groups or workshops, in which to debate, ask about the ideas in lectures.
• often, usually in Year 3, you may enjoy one-to-one supervision for a dissertation on a subject of your choice. Here more serious study and writing is involved.
• even if you are on a vocationally based degree, you need to be self critical - understanding the ways other people have debated and theorised the sort of work you're trying to produce.

How can MSB help?

MSB is often used in the First Year of degree study (though it does get used at other levels). One reason for this is that many universities rightly emphasise at second- and third-year level of a degree the importance of going to primary sources (the original theorists) rather than a guide to them such as MSB.

• MSB develops the exploratory, critical thinking which HE study involves, at the same time as offering solid definitions and case studies to help you grasp difficult areas.
• The book's topics are not specific to particular syllabuses
• Some of MSB's terms and emphases link 'media studies' with 'cultural studies', a broader study of culture(s). This will equip you better for HE than simpler accounts of media.
• We provide scores of activities and questions, embedded in chapters and case studies, which will help you test your progress and understanding as you go along. Thumbnail biographies, jokes and examples in the margins - all are intended to tempt you to go further. Both book and website are meant to be dipped into, helping you to find something else that interests you.
• There are sample pieces of student work here, such as those projects from Cirencester College but you should be aware that these are not THE answer to this or that question.
• HE gives you a chance to explore larger libraries, both electronic and print, and use more advanced and expensive research tools (perhaps LexisNexis) than are usually available for school and FE work.

The website offers a rich range of links to other useful sites (and print forms), a brief guide to what you may find there, and a sense of which ones are reliable, since the Internet is notoriously unreliable. We will keep this resource updated, since sites change and even disappear so quickly.

• The book has changed substantially with each edition (see www.itpmag.demon.co.uk) partly because the world, and theories about it, is changing and that needed addressing since it was, and is part of the subject's excitement, for us as well as you. Documentary, for example, has recently become so important that it now has a whole chapter devoted to it and 'reality TV'.
• But these changes and additions have meant that some chapters and case studies, which readers had grown fond of, had to be cut. The website is a very welcome chance to research which ones you'd like to access, and to update and provide some of the most popular previous case studies.

Please keep in touch about what else from previous editions you have found useful and would like to see here, as well as what you like and would like on this site.