okay so hello and welcome to this being a
film and animation student webinar my name is Chris and i work at the University of Chichester
for the student recruitment and outreach team and i'm going to be hosting this
session today and taking you through some kind of conversational questions with two
of our students or one of our students and one of our recent graduates. I will get them to
introduce themselves so firstly we've got Steve. Hello my name is Steve and i'm a second year
Audio Pro
duction Music Technology student. Thanks Steve and then i've also got Tom here as
well. Hello i'm Tom and i'm a recent graduate, so i graduated last summer
from Media and Communications. Thanks very much guys. So we're going to work
our way through a series of different questions that we've got to give you a bit more information
on being a student at the University of Chichester and hopefully that may fill you in with a lot of
information but if you do also have any questions that come up t
hroughout then we'll give you some
contacts at the end so you can get those questions answered and that will come in the form of emails
and social media channels and bits and pieces. So first things first you'll see on the screen now
this is all the different kind of areas of course that we offer within our Creative Industries
department and we have everything from Digital Film Production through to Commercial Music,
Games Design and Esports down there as well and you've already heard Steve
talk about
his Audio Production course and also Tom talk about the Media and Communications course.
Hopefully these are all the different courses that you've applied for and you'll also
find that some of these have some kind of joint modules or joint courses as well that you
you may well have applied for. If you want to find out any more information about your specific
courses or the modules and the syllabuses you can check out the website there chi.ac.uk/courses
and that will give you mu
ch more information and also some department level contacts
should you have any specific questions. The information that we're going to cover today is
more about student life and more about that kind of hands-on experience and that actually living
in university experience so there is more course level information then you can contact those
different people via the website. So first things first i'm going to start with a couple
of questions about that those first steps before you got to univ
ersity so what did you do before
joining the University. I'm going to come to Steve first, i'm going to ask you a bit about what steps
did you take before you joined the university. Yeah so the steps i took were it's an unorthodox
method of approach but i watched a lot of vlogs concerning the University of Chichester,
people who are moving in, the environment, the surrounding area, the beach and travel
vlogs basically how to get there and what fun things to do because i really kept in touch
with everything, the courses and whatnot and i just wanted to find out about how to get myself in
the mood especially as an international student or traveling, setting down, yeah. Thanks Steve,
yeah and importantly there you mentioned that you are an international student so that's yeah
really good, vlogs and blogs, interesting. Then second question there then i'll come to you Tom
and i know it's a little bit further back for you having been a graduate but how did you feel
initially about
going to university were there certain feelings that that came up for you.
Yeah i just remember being... because where i had taken some time out of education by the
time i started my degree i was like 24 and so i was a bit nervous thinking or like assuming
that everyone else in my degree would be like straight out of a level so like 18 19 so that did
make me a little bit anxious thinking of sort of like stick out like a sore thumb being the only
like mid-20s person but i was actually pleas
antly surprised that by the time i started i realized
that everyone like yeah most people are from like coming from a level straight away but it's also
quite a mix of different ages and backgrounds so it actually ended up not really being
something i should have worried about too much. And also what helped was going to like
applicant days and visit days, getting a bit more of a feel for what the course
is like and what the campuses are like and so that really helped me feel a little less
n
ervous about that side of things heading into it but yeah i was also just really excited as
well because where i'd taken some time out it working in retail this sort of like
felt like the next sort of like big step so it was a mix of like being a bit anxious
but also just really excited as well. Thanks Tom that's really cool. Coming back to
you Steve, just to kind of pick up on on your being an international student, did you did you
have access to similar things like applicant days or open
days did you attend any applicant days
or open days what how did that work out for you. It is it was hard because I personally
didn't attend any applicant days or open days especially over covey because that's when
i enrolled so there's not much of that but what i said i did and what international students
do is they just kept on checking their websites for information, all the webinars just like these
, the videos, the campus tours that's helpful and you know like gives you an idea of how
university
is going to be and gets you in that mood. Brilliant, thank you that links us probably quite
nicely onto some of the things that we classas kind of some of the top tips before you before you
attend in September. So obviously you've already had things like open days and those have been,
kind of come and gone but there are going to be some in, we have got one coming up on the 2nd of
July, so there is that other chance for you to visit campus if you do wish to still come then
obviou
sly we would love to see you on that day. There will be kind of a whole host of different
things happening and there will also be students who are thinking next year but equally there will
be students who are obviously coming this year. One of the things that you've talked about as well
was the applicant days, taster sessions, webinars. We do host a lot a lot of different sessions
that we like to offer to give students that feel, to give students that experience and also to
get them in the
mood for coming in September. Something that's really important and i think
something that you've both kind of echoed is that visiting the local area and getting to know what's
around what what sort of things there are on offer you are going to be studying and living in an
area potentially it's not your immediate home area for up to about up to three years if not more.
Something that we we've been told before as well from some of our students who commute is test
running that journey from un
iversity to home sounds like an odd one but if you've already
got that added stress of getting to university or time you want to make sure that the traffic's
right or the trains are running on time and those sorts of things, it's always always a good thing
to have a little bit of a test. Really importantly it's asking questions, you will find you are not
the only one with those questions in your head, you never are and it's really important that
you get those answered. Whether that's throug
h some of the social media channels, whether that's
through some of the emails that you can find on the website for our admissions team, for our
recruitment team, lots and lots of different ones that we will talk about as we come to the
end and we'll share those with you as well. So moving on then to that to that getting started
so again you're both a little bit a little bit away from that initial first year but i'm sure
you've both got very different experiences of your first week at unive
rsity, so Tom i'll come
to you first this time. What was your first week at university like can you can you give us an
idea on the sorts of things you got involved in. Yeah um so first of all you have freshers
week which doesn't have any or at least i don't think it does have any like teaching time,
that sort of like then follows the next week on so in freshers week is when the big
sort of like first social events of the semester happen and those are
really good opportunities for you to ge
t to know other people from different courses or
if you're in accommodation those are normally like times where people like have that first like night
out and properly start to get to know each other. Then sort of like the first week of teaching
is all very introductory, normally the first sessions are quite almost like hands-off approach,
where they might start off with like a icebreaker activity, like something as simple
as just everyone goes around saying their name and what maybe like a
little
bit of their background just to start getting to know each other. So yeah it's all the
very, first week or first few weeks are all quite nice in that you're not thrown into the deep end
straight away, it all it all builds up, so yeah it's quite a nice way to start off, especially if
some people have sort of like been feeling a bit nervous before beforehand. You get to you, sort of
like get to start building up quite slowly before anything to like you're not diving straight into
ass
essments or anything like that, those are all later on in the semester, so the first
week's quitequite easy going to be honest. Brilliant, thanks Tom.
Steve was there anything that you did in your first week still sticks out
in your mind or activities you got involved in. Yeah just as Tom saidgetting involved in freshers
week, that's a place where you can meet all the societies, handball, football, rugby, even anime
and people who love video games. So you can join any society. I personally j
oined football and play
for the university and i've been to the same team all the way second year now going into third
year, so just getting involved in the freshers week finding something you love doing, your
niche and finding like-minded people like you. Excellent, thank you. So Stephen from
a from an international perspective, how did you find settling into student life?
It was quite easy i would say because even before i got into the country i
already knew who my flatmates were, I knew
who the people in my accommodation,
the people in my course because you have a Facebook group with all the students and another
Facebook group for people in your accommodation, so you already know them. I even told them
because i was a week late and everyone basically knew so when i got into my accommodation i was
seeing people waving at me from their windows. Nice, that's brilliant thank you and Tom,
you were a bit different. You didn't live in accommodation did you so how did
you find se
ttling in the first week. Yeah so it was really different for me because
i've lived in Bognor all my life so Bognor campus, it's just really simple for me to still live at
home and so for me i think the main thing was sort of especially where i'd been away from education
for a while it was sort of like getting back into the the assessments and the work side of things,
that was probably the bit that took the longest. But what's good is that first year you get quite
a lot of assistance from y
our academics and so especially with like you haven't written an
essay for quite a long time you they give you quite a lot of help in sort of like building those
skills back up. Then as as Steven mentioned about societies i did join film society because i'm like
quite into films and media that sort of thing and so that was another way that i sort of like made
or got to know some people from the university sort of like outside of my degree. There's a lot
of different ways to get to know peop
le and make friends so it's quite nice and in that way sort
of you weren't you weren't limited to who you were getting to know or who you are interacting
with. Thank you, so moving on then i mean this is this is probably as long as a piece of string
is for different courses but this is last year two examples of two students typical timetables but
i'm sure you guys have very different timetables can you give just kind of a very quick overview
of roughly what days you were in and what days yo
u were potentially free to do other things.
Tom do you want to you want to go first. For me it was different each semester, you get a
different timetable each semester and plus where different degrees do different modules and
they're sort of like structured differently i think for me the average session was about two
hours. Where media and communications is the most theory based degree in the department, that meant
most sessions were sort of like an hour doing a lecture having a little brea
k for like five or
ten minutes and then the rest of it would be a a seminar so more of a group based discussion and
then it was different again in third year doing my independent project or dissertation, where that's
obviously like completely independent. You get tutorials with your advisor because everyone gets
like allocated a tutor for the dissertation but even though that did have like a timetabled slot
it was where it was independent it was completely up to you how you approached that,
But more
often than not the sessions would be two hours and I think at most I was in four
days, just where the timetabling ended up scheduling them but they were i think
i did have one semester in one year where i think three out of my four modules ended
up being on the same day. So i ended up with one really long day and then a second day in
the week that was only for like one module so it kind of ends up kind of depends
on how the timetabling ends up. But definitely time to explore othe
r things
and work outside so that's cool and Steve how about you for your timetable? probably
in the most recent year might be useful So my time table is we're in three times a week
but we have about three to four hour sessions, so let's say we have a lecture on Monday
it'll be like about three to four hours and then Tuesday and Thursday, Wednesdays and
Fridays are usually left free because students usually participate in sports activities versus
other universities on Wednesday so it's ver
y hard to get everyone in class together on Wednesday
so yeah that's the rough timetable we have. Outside of that are you guys allowed to use the
equipment that you were using were you allowed to use the studios those sorts of things as well?
Yes there's a booking platform online, you can book what time you want to use the studio
or the facilities or equipment and the technicians will get to back to you giving you a booking
confirmation. You can even book a place all the way up until midnigh
t! Oh wow okay that's that's
quite impressive i didn't realize it was quite that late but fantastic brilliant thank you guys
So moving on then so something that i think you mentioned was the Facebook group and our Facebook
group has has been going for a few years now and we renew it each year and we'll give some details
at the end but some of the concerns that come out of that are obviously some of the ones you can
see on screen there, people think about exams and assessment methods and what
support there is.
Were there any particular ones you think that you had that aren't necessarily highlighted
on there? Steve do you want to go first In terms of exams, people are always thinking
about exams sitting down pen and paper or just answering questions on the test. The thing about
it is it's much more free than that, you can have a practical exam. Just easy, like the lecture
watching your process, how you're working and that will be basically be the whole exam
and it's not it's no
t as such as a high pressure situation because they're there to
support you even though it's exam conditions. Brilliant thank you, so i think people will
have that word exam from school when they go straight into panic mode. They're going to be
in rows and rows of seats in a big hall and it's obviously at university it's very different.
Tom how about you were there any things that you would say were your kind of top
concerns before you came to university? I think my concerns were sort of lik
e the
ones on the screen or something like quite related to those so i remember, even though
i'm quite interested in filmmaking or like a practical that practical side of things, I also
knew that media was like the most theory based, i was i was a bit unsure how if I happened to do
a practical module in one semester i was a bit worried about would they expect everyone to be
a genius on the camera or something like that. But for media and like the film production
degrees in the first semest
er or first year you do a module called Practice Toolkit or it might be
slightly different now but when i did it it was called Practice Toolkit and it was an introductory
module where everyone works in a group to put together their own trailer poster and website for
a film idea that they have. So with that you get to know how to set up the cameras, you get to know
a bit about the editing software, we use photoshop and so it was really helpful because I was a
bit concerned that they might so
rt of expect everyone to be like an absolute whiz
on the camera or with editing but no there's introductory things in the first year
that gives knowledge for everyone to build on Thank you, I think that's quite important isn't
it, I know i talk to talk to groups in schools and events and people are like 'what do i already need
to know?' do i need to know any particular kit, equipment, books, software? and it's
realising isn't it everyone's coming for a very different place you might
know s
omething and someone else might know something totally different so there
are those lectures and there are those workshops to get you up to speed as well so
that's good. Thanks that's really important I'm not going to go through every single question
there but i'll come across to you guys to kind of fill in. Did you... so Tom we know you didn't live
in accommodation for your first year but Steve you did and and how did you how did you feel? how did
you go about making new friends? Steve you
said initially you knew or you felt like you knew
a lot of people before you got here, which is really cool. So was there anything that that stood
out as you used as a way of making new friends? Basically you know just having having a laugh,
talking to people, moving in telling them oh i love doing this, i love playing guitar, i might
make noise because i listen to a lot of rock music and basically find people with the same
interest just by bantering around like that. Brilliant yeah that's
cool. I suppose it's
about being social and not being afraid to to just talk to people. Everyone's in a
similar position wherever they've come from, they don't know people so that's quite
cool. Tom, is there anything you would say, i mean from from an aspect of not necessarily
living in halls but still coming into a room full of new people. Was there anything you felt you
got involved with or that you did differently? I alsojoined the freshers or applicant group for
the people who are sta
rting at the same time as me and so in that i remember i think i posted asking
like who else was doing media and so that was a helpful way to sort of just to like recognize
names so that it wasn't complete surprise when we started. Joining a society helped as well because
like i said before that was a really good way to get to know people outside of of my degree because
the societies are open to anyone, they're not like dependent on you being part of a certain course
group or certain depart
ment so yeah that was sort of like one of my main worries heading into my
degree but there's a so many opportunities to get to know people either on your course or on
a completely different course to you as well Brilliant, Thank you guys that's cool and leads us
onto some of the stuff you've touched on already. I think you've both loosely touched on the word
that everyone fears exams, essays, all those sorts of things and I regularly tell people in schools
I think with degrees across the co
untry irrelevant of where you go you can play to your strengths
and like you say, they're not as horrendous as you feel or your experiences in the past but Tom
i'll come to you first with your course, what type of assessments did you take in your subject?
Were there any particular methods they used? Yeah as Media and Communications as mostly
theory there is a lot of essay writing but even so there's still a lot of variety in how
some of the assessments are done some of them are more creativ
e portfolios where you sort of you're
given the word count and then it's up to you how you sort of use that. There's a journalism
module i did where it was that exactly that, we were all given the word count and it was up
to us how many pieces of journalistic writing we did and format as well. You could also
i do some essays as video essays instead so there's still plenty of opportunity to do
something more practical based if that's someone's particular interest and especially with
the dis
sertation in the final year, there's a lot of freedom with uh how you can choose to do that
and what subject area you do it on. So for me i i did it just as a sort of standard dissertation
but i chose it on my favourite video game and so that ended up being a really good way to
sort of keep it interesting or at least not get too uh bogged down in sort of like 'oh i've got
to do more writing for my dissertation' , i was always sort of like quite happy to delve into it.
Someone else on my cour
se group did their dissertation as a documentary, so there was a lot
of freedom in how we could format it and structure it . There was other more practical modules as
well where you got to use the camera equipment, use the editing software as well so there's a
lot, it was still sort of like mostly theory and writing but there's a lot of opportunity to
do other formats for the assessments too. Brilliant, Steve coming on to you then. Is
there any different types of assessment or are there any
other different types of assessment
that you would add into that, that you've done. Looking over at the presentation there's
a picture of a guy looking at the screen sitting over a desk, that happens to be
my head lecturer for my course, so for some of our assessments we basically have the
same scenario we're trying to work with something either music or film or audio, basically
audio in film, music, games and using the industry standard equipment that the university
provides the lecturer
s take a step back and watch how we're doing it, if we know everything
and then we can back up our decisions in the practical side with an essay
afterwards just talking about what we we did. Excellent, so very hands-on, you get
to play to your strengths and also play into the strengths and the skills that you'll
need eventually to work in the industry that you're working towards. Brilliant, thank you.
This leads nicely onto kind of the things that are on offer as well for students, i won't d
elve
too much into this but this is something that we do talk about a lot and we do make sure
that students know but there are a multitude of different support on offer. Everything from
academic skills as people were saying at the start and Tom you said about not necessarily knowing
how to structure an essay and being told and taught how to work and do a bibliography, those
sorts of things right the way through to things like our chaplaincy, we also have a very good
support team for things
like disability, dyslexia, student health so everything from physical health
right the way through to to mental health Uin mind counselling. Those sorts of things and also
student money which is really important again it's that aspect of how you'll fund your way through
university, how you'll budget, all those sorts of things as well. There are people at every step of
your journey to obviously be there to support you, as well as you guys have kind of echoed all
the way through is your lect
urers and your academics are very open to supporting you with all
those different aspects as well so that's good. Moving on to the next part then
this is this is kind of some of the questions i always really like to hear
as well, i'll come to you Steve first, has there been a favourite part or a standout
memory so far of your course that comes to mind Yeah i'll take you back, we had a module called
field field and location recording so basically capturing audio out in the field and then
br
inging what we captured back into the studios but that was my favourite part because we ended
up working with a variety of cars and sports cars like a Jaguar XF, we had some
electric cars, some old school cars. So just recording using the university
equipment, listening to, as a petrol head that i am it was quite exciting just capturing the
sounds of these cars engines and probably using them in games or films or even like commercials.
Excellent that sounds brilliant and and Tom, same questi
on is there anything that stands out
as one of your top memories from your three years. There's quite a few like i think the sort
of like probably the more recent one is that i'm really proud of like how my
dissertation came along because my final year was quite disrupted with all the
covid stuff, so the first semester was i was able to be on campus for face-to-face teaching but then
after Christmas it was back to online learning, that was a little bit stressful, so i essentially
had to wr
ite my dissertation from my bedroom and so that was a bit of a challenge but i was
really proud of how it all came together and as i did it on a subject that was a
really big interest of mine it was just quite nice having that sort
of freedom to be able to do that. Earlier in the in the degree there
was a module in the first year where we were ... it was a longest timetabled
session and so the first part of it we would watch a film and then we'd have like a little
break and then the lectur
e and seminar all about analyzing that film and what genre it was because
it was like all about Hollywood filmmaking. It was a different genre each each week of the
semester for that module. That was a lot of fun being able to watch a film at uni for the session
and then... not straight into but follow up with like a seminar group discussion. As someone who's
really into filmmaking that was a lot of fun so yeah those are probably my two favourite bits.
Thanks Tom, okay and then very quickly
so have you got any particular plans or
a particular aspiration to do once you've or now you've graduated? Tom to you first
So at the moment I am working an internship at the University and so where my last year of my degree
was a bit disrupted it's been really nice to keep that link for a little while
longer with the university but then going forwards further down the line I would
like to either do something media related particularly i'd like to get into gaming or just
journalism in gener
al sort of gaming journalism and i feel like my degree provided me a
good foundation to build upon for that with journalism modules, doing a bit of blog creation
as well and so that'swhat i hope to get into. Thanks tom and Steve is there anywhere that
you you see yourself or something that's an aspiration for you once you graduated?
I want to graduate i want to go into sound design for video games and
audio programming for video games. Excellent, so yeah that's quite an
exciting field and a
s you've already said you've obviously done some stuff
to do with that. Brilliant thank you. Coming on to one of our final slides of
questions and what i'll do is i'll give one of these to each of you so i'll read them
out and then i'll get you guys to answer. So what would you say to someone considering
studying here? So Steve i'll come to you first with that one, so what would you say
to someone considering studying here? I'd say just go for it as we are a small hands-on
university with
small class sizes and things like that you have all the equipment and lectures with
20 years plus knowledge in the field at your feet. As my lecturers always say 'the worlds
the oyster', 'the uni is your oyster' so just use all the equipment, facilities,
get with everything, the societies because at the end of the day everything is here
for you and it's up to you to make the most of it. Thanks Steve that's cool and then Tom the
second question, Is there any advice you would give before some
one starts their studies?
Is there one piece of advice that stands out First of all i'd just like to echo what Steven
was saying because there's so much available at the uni to use and get to know with the
academics and all the equipment available as well but then for advice if if they haven't
already i'd say like come have a visit day with like either a campus tour or
on like an open day that's a really good way for you to get a feel for what the university
is like especially if you get t
o visit while it's still like in semester time so all the
students are still around. Also if you had a particular question about the course i'd recommend
trying to contact someone in the department or preferably like the one of the lecturers from
that degree to try and hear from them specifically about the course and lwhat the course content is
like as well. They'll be there on open days as well so if someone was able to get to come to an
open day those are really good opportunities to get
to know the university and the lecturers.
Fantastic, thanks Tom that's brilliant So i've come to my final final slide but we'll
end up on this in a second. As i've said all the way through there are different platforms that
you can talk to us on, you can talk to students on a multitude of different things but you can
talk to them on Unibuddy which is there which is chi.ac.uk/chat and i can tell you Steve is one of
our ambassadors who's on that so you may well end up chatting to him. We've al
so mentioned quite a
few times our undergraduate Facebook group which you can see there, you can always pause this video
and follow that, it will ask you a few questions to join it just to check you are actually an
applicant to the university but it's nice and easy to get onto. As Steve already said and as Tom
already said it really does help you to start to know people, you'll meet people, you'll chat to
people, you'll probably form your own Whatsapp groups and all sorts that will really h
elp you
to get to know people before you actually start. One last slide is a case of are there any
questions, i realize you'll be watching this on demand now so you can contact us either
via those channels or you also will find on our website quite a few different emails um one of
those being studyhere@chi.ac.uk ,you can email us any questions on that and we can pass those on
to the right departments and also if it's maybe more course related questions you can also email
our admissions tea
m on admissions@chi.ac.uk and we can pass those on to the relevant departments.
I am going to finish up there and i'm going to say thank you very very much to Steve and Tom
for sharing their experiences this afternoon and hopefully we will see some of you here
in September. Thanks very much, thanks guys.
Comments