| CODE | BEN1010 | |||||||||
| TITLE | Communication and Study Skills | |||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 01 - Year 1 in Modular Undergraduate Course | |||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | |||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | |||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Visual Arts | |||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit is an introduction to communication, study, and research skills for students in the creative and design fields. It develops and/or deepens students' present understanding of the requirements of scholarly University level study and in the creative professions. This study-unit aims to equip students with a broad range of practical communication, study, and research skills appropriate to the study of creative and design oriented courses at Undergraduate level. It does this with the expectation that students will immediately and directly apply the knowledges and skills that they gain week by week in the course and in the assessable tasks students undertake in the course. The content of the study-unit draws broadly from the fields of Cultural Studies, Semiotics, Philosophy, Linguistics, Media Studies, Art History, Visual and Communications Theory, as well as appropriate University style approaches to academic study, research, and writing, While remaining practically oriented, the unit nevertheless seats students within a rigorous and thoroughgoing theoretical and scholarly framework. Thus students will be expected to show increasing competencies in their capacities to use a range of communicational strategies and languages (such as visual language, body language, audio visual presentations, public speaking, academic languages, etc) at the same time as situating their work in interdisciplinary discourses appropriate to creative and design disciplines and at tertiary educational level. Specifically the study-unit will outline, introduce, and encourage students to: - develop a broad understanding of contemporary communication theory and semiotics. - develop their understanding of effective communication in a myriad of forms, expressions, and languages including visual language, body language, the language of landscape, the built environment, public audio visual presentations, as well as successful communication in scholarly and scientific communities. - develop their understanding and appropriate use of scholarly scientific and academic discourses. This study-unit thus offers students the opportunity to commence developing a sophisticated theoretical and practically applied knowledge relating to successful communication in educational settings as well as in creative and design oriented cultural and professional contexts. Study-unit Aims: This study-unit aims to: - simultaneously develop students' understanding and ability to deploy a wide range of communication skills and strategies appropriate both to tertiary educational institutions as well as in broader creative and design oriented contexts. - develop students' skills in study, research, and production appropriate to creative and design oriented professions. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Demonstrate an understanding of what constitutes successful communication in a range of settings and contexts utilising visual, spoken, written, and other media forms. - Develop an interdisciplinary historical outline of the development of contemporary communication theory. - Demonstrate an ability to adapt communicational forms to meet appropriate academic and scholarly requirements. - Demonstrate an increased and sophisticated understanding of the requirements of academic and scholarly discourses. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will have: - Developed their understanding of communicational acts in both scholarly and non-scholarly contexts. - Developed research, reading, and analytical skills. - Developed skills in public speaking and audio visual presentations. - Developed skills in presenting educational and didactic presentations on subjects related to tertiary education. - Integrated interdisciplinary knowledges drawn from Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Linguistics, Media Studies, and other Social Sciences and applied these as appropriate within creative and design oriented intellectual disciplines and discourses. - Developed and demonstrated an ability to deploy coherent arguments and justifiable analyses of readings and research. - Developed skills in analytical thinking, criticism, and the creative synthesis of ideas drawn in an interdisciplinary environment, arriving at unique and appropriate solutions to those problems. - Worked with other students in group oriented projects. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Books - Robert Audi (ed), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. - Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Granada, 1981. - John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin, 2009. - Daniel Chandler, Semiotics : The Basics, Routledge 2002. - Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, Metheun 1982. - Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress, Social Semiotics, Polity Press, 1988. - Gunther Kress (ed), Communication and Culture, Uni of New South Wales, 1988. - Thomas Mautner (ed), Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, Penguin 1997. - Stuart Sim, The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, Icon Books, 1998. - Kate Turabian, A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th Edition, Uni of Chicago Press, 2007. - Raymond Williams, Keywords : A vacabulary of culture and society, Fontana 1988Peter Wollen, Readings and Writing : Semiotic Counter-Strategies, Verso 1982. Web Sources - Online Academic Skills Resources http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/olib.html (accessed 12 Feb 2012) - Academic Skills and Learning Centre, Australian National University, (accessed 12 Feb 2012) https://academicskills.anu.edu.au/ - Study Guides and Useful Websites http://www1.aston.ac.uk/current-students/academic-support/ldc/studyguides/ (accessed 12 Feb 2012) - Academic Skills Centre http://www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/success/study.html (accessed 12 Feb 2012) - Guide to Academic Study, http://www.jamesabela.co.uk/exams/studybook.html (accessed 12 Feb 2012) - How to do research creatively http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statistics/postgrad/rsc/2010/creativity10.pdf (accessed 12 Feb 2012) Journal Articles - American Educational Research Association, “Standards for Reporting on Empirical Social Science Research in AERA Publications”, Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 33-40 (available on-line at http://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Publications/Journals/Educational_Researcher/3506/12ERv35n6_Standard4Report%20.pdf). - American Educational Research Association, “Standards for Reporting on Humanities Oriented Research in AERA Publications”, Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 481-486 (available on-line at http://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Journals_and_Publications/Journals/481-486_09EDR09.pdf). |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | |||||||||
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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