Screenwriting (Joint Honours)

Teaching

You are taught through a combination of lectures, seminars, practical group work, peer review sessions and individual development tutorials.

In addition, meetings with personal academic tutors are scheduled on at least 4 occasions in the first year and three occasions in each of the other years of a course.

You have an opportunity to undertake a work-based module and industry standard projects in the third year of the course, supervised by an appropriate industry mentor and University tutor.

Contact time

In a typical week you will have around 10 contact hours of teaching. The precise contact hours will depend on the optional modules selected and in the final year you will normally have slightly less contact time in order to do more independent study.

Typically class contact time will be structured around:

• 3 hours of practical workshop and group discussion
• 1 hour of lecture or group seminar

Independent self-study

In addition to the contact time, you are expected to undertake around 16 hours of personal self-study per week. Typically, this will involve reading journal articles and books, working on practical individual and group projects, undertaking research in the library and online and preparing coursework assignments and presentations.

Independent learning is supported by a range of excellent learning facilities, including the Hive and library resources, the virtual learning environment, and extensive electronic learning resources.

Teaching staff

You will be taught by a teaching team whose expertise and knowledge are closely matched to the content of the modules on the course. The team includes senior academics, professional practitioners with industry experience and script development assistants.

Teaching is informed by the research and consultancy, and 75 per cent of course lecturers have a higher education teaching qualification or are Fellows of the Higher Education Academy. You can learn more about the staff by visiting our staff profiles.

Assessment

As with other courses in the University, Screenwriting has a variety of assessment types which are both formative and summative. Formative assessments normally carry no weighting but are critical for the students’ development and preparation for the related summative assessment. Formative assessment can take the form of learning team or peer review or presentations and rehearsed readings. In addition, formative assessment can be a part of the individual tutorial system. Each assessment is aligned with its intended learning outcomes and learning activities so it is clear what is being assessed.

Feedback

You will receive feedback on practice assessments and on formal assessments undertaken by coursework. Feedback is intended to support learning and you are encouraged to discuss it with personal academic tutors and module tutors as appropriate.

We aim to provide you with feedback on formal course work assessments within 20 working days of hand-in.

Programme specification

For comprehensive details on the aims and intended learning outcomes of the course, and the means by which these are achieved through learning, teaching and assessment, please download the latest programme specification document.