Learning & Teaching

Title of case study	Audiovisual dissertation
School / subject	School of Culture & Creative Arts
Lecturer	Professor Ian Garwood
Course	MA Film & Television Studies
Student Level	UG
Class size	Around 10 each year (we have around 70 Senior Hons dissertation students each year in total, of which about 10 choose to do one of the audiovisual options)

Brief summary

The MA Film and Television Studies programme develops students’ skills in the critical study of screen media. It offers a number of opportunities to employ filmmaking practice as a means of academic research. The audiovisual dissertation allows students in their final year to develop their critical skills on an independently chosen research topic, employing editing and/or filmmaking as part of their methodology. 

 

Objectives 

The key objective of the Audiovisual Dissertation is to develop students’ research skills on an independently conceived project. These skills include the ability to organise time and resources effectively; to identify appropriate source materials; to identify appropriate research methods including ones involving filmmaking practice; to communicate effectively with their supervisor; to use feedback constructively; to evince a deep knowledge and understanding of the chosen topic; and to present findings in a clear manner that adheres to scholarly conventions and exploits the potential to make arguments audiovisually. 

 

What is done?

There are currently four different options for the audiovisual dissertation: 

• 20-minute audiovisual dissertation with 500 words contextualising statement (40 credits) 

• 10-minute audiovisual dissertation and complementary 5,000 word essay (40 credits) 

• 10-minute audiovisual dissertation with 500 words contextualising statement (20 credits) 

• 5-minute audiovisual dissertation with complementary 3,500 word essay (20 credits) 

For all these options 80% of the mark is accounted for by the final dissertation and 20% by a process mark, which takes into account the entire research process, as witnessed by the supervisor.

What works well?

The audiovisual dissertation is an option usually taken by students who have already done some form of practice in the context of their degree. As such, the dissertation works well as an academic endpoint that allows students to refine their use of practice within an academic research context. Having said that, the option is also open to students who have not employed practice in other courses and, for these students, the length of the research process (beginning in the second Semester of Junior Honours) allows them to get up to speed with the debate of how filmmaking and/or editing can be used in academic research. The assessment criteria are shared between the written and audiovisual forms of the dissertation and this has worked well to ensure that students tailor their practice to academic ends. 

 

Benefits (students & staff)

Students: 

• Provides an opportunity for innovation and creativity 

• Allows for the academic exploration of a topic in a way that is just as rigorous as it is for students doing the purely written dissertation options 

• Allows students to critique screen media using screen media techniques 

• Allows students to develop practical skills that may be useful in subsequent careers 

• Produces work that can, potentially, be disseminated outside the academic context and/or used in showreels 

Staff: 

• Allows all staff to engage with a practice-as-research methodology that is becoming more prominent within screen studies 

• Provides an opportunity for discussion of supervisory practices, assessment criteria and support structures for practice-as-research work, rather than that discussion being siloed into specialist practice-oriented options

Challenges (students & staff)

Students: 

• Overcoming the perception that an academic audiovisual essay has to adopt one particular form 

• Fully exploiting the potential to make an argument audiovisually, rather than producing a visualised version of a written essay 

• Thinking through the relationship between the written and audiovisual components of their work (even the ‘full’ audiovisual versions require a 500-word contextualising statement). 

• Making the move earlier from planning on the page to experimenting through practice 

• Setting up their own devices with the appropriate software to complete the audiovisual work (though they get a lot of advice about this and it has not been a significant problem) 

Staff: 

• Taking a consistent approach across supervisors to the supervision process and to assessment 

• Certain members of staff becoming known as the experts on audiovisual dissertations, with potential for the student getting conflicting advice from different members of staff 

What did you learn?

The audiovisual option for the dissertation has proven popular and enduring. As staff, we learned it is possible to offer this option without too much support that is additional to what dissertation students (of any type) are offered. Having said that, we do have a section in the dissertation course document that offers basic guidance on the audiovisual options. We run a specific session about the audiovisual dissertation and we also have a specific section on the Moodle devoted to audiovisual dissertation resources, which includes a document with up-to-date information on free software and on relevant techniques such as screen recording. 

 

What advice would you give to others?

As educators, have an awareness of copyright issues, but do not adopt a risk-averse position that stops you offering assessments/courses like this. Whilst the audiovisual dissertation does allow students scope to do their own original filming, it has been most common for the dissertations to feature clips from existing copyrighted materials. Such use is allowed under fair dealing copyright law in the UK and, within screen studies, a precedent has been set by the large number of academic journals that now publish video essays containing film and TV clips, without seeking approval from the copyright holders in each case. This resource from Learning on Screen is useful in giving guidance about making video essays in an academic context and also contains some advice about copyright considerations. 

In terms of technical/resource considerations, in an ideal world, the university would hold a site-wide license for something like Creative Cloud that would allow all students access to a wide variety of digital tools, including editing software. I would be very happy to join forces with other subjects to advocate for this. However, in Film and TV Studies we have developed a lot of experience in enabling students to do audiovisual work on their own devices using free software and I am happy to share guidance documents/knowledge.