Please note

This document only provides information for the academic year selected and does not form part of the student contract

Awarding Institution

University of Huddersfield

Final Award

MA Master of Arts

Teaching Institution

University of Huddersfield

School

School of Arts and Humanities

Subject Benchmark Statement

Characteristic Statement - Master's Degree, NQF - Level 7, UG Art and Design (2016)

Date of Programme Specification Approval

2024-06-28

Version Number

2025.01

Educational Aims of the Course

Art and Communication within the School of Arts and Humanities has acquired a global reputation for producing exceptionally talented and motivated students at the forefront of their discipline. Built upon a highly creative, technically advanced, transdisciplinary, professional culture our provision offers five named awards delivered through an integrated framework programme … For more content click the Read More button below.   As befits a School of global significance where excellence in research and teaching meet creative practice, our Masters’ graduates succeed in positioning themselves confidently as practitioners in their fields. They achieve this by acquiring advanced core subject knowledge and understanding at the forefront of their creative discipline, led by research active staff. The programme is designed to create maximum opportunities for the student to benefit from the unique learning environment presented by the Barbara Hepworth Building. In doing so students have access to state-of-the-art facilities and studios in which to create a bespoke Masters’ journey and independent learning is expected.   Our programme structure delivered by staff and invited guest experts enable students to become creative innovators; adaptable, resilient and technically savvy, ensuring that they are at the forefront of transdisciplinary thinking, global trends and collaborative futures. As part of a dynamic and interactive community offering rigorous studio practice, we encourage students to locate and interrogate the boundaries of their specialism through practice-based methodological enquiry and experimental research processes. An engagement with Professional Platforms serves to highlight potential future directions for each individual.   Each Masters course is underpinned by subject-specific themes and topics linked to research generated throughout the School, inviting opportunities for participation, collaboration and exchange between staff and students in a variety of activities through our research centres and live external projects. The aims of the programme are to:   provide a stimulating postgraduate teaching and learning experience exploring the opportunities and challenges posed in the contemporary world, based on the professional experience of leading global practitioners in the field of art and communication, and the research strengths School's highly qualified and experienced staff.   encourage and nurture your confidence in mastering advanced subject knowledge through practice at the forefront of the discipline.   ensure you cultivate transdisciplinary and transferable skills and attributes relevant to your future success through creative exchange with students from other subject disciplines and cultural backgrounds.   enable you to realise and apply your ideas, skills and abilities in real-world cultural contexts and creative industries through understanding and experience of creative innovation and entrepreneurship.   To develop your capability for independent judgment, strategic decision making and critical self-awareness leading to advanced knowledge and professional practice within and beyond existing subject specialism.   The Core educational aims of the Art and Communication Master’s suite of courses are: To stimulate practice-based research activity to cross conventional boundaries.   To develop innovative and imaginative approaches to materials, processes and methodologies in the fields of art and communication, and rigorously test these ideas against current global trends.   To experiment and expand progressive thinking in the practices of art and communication to meet future demands.   To support the realisation of a major project that combines knowledge of advanced ideation and the application of appropriate methodologies, creative contexts, aesthetic, technical and analytical processes and critical skills as professionally appropriate.

Course Offering(s)

Full Time

Full Time - January
Full Time - September

Part Time

Part Time - September
Part Time - January

Interim Award

Master of Arts
Postgraduate Certificate
Postgraduate Diploma

Teaching, Learning and Assessment

Our taught postgraduate teaching, learning and assessment strategy is learner-centred, practitioner-focused, contextually-driven, responsive and inclusive. Its experiential dynamic thrives on the interaction of diversity of perspectives and approaches leading to innovation within a community of scholar-practitioners, whether staff or students. Our curriculum design encourages and enables students to engage in … For more content click the Read More button below.   Our teaching and learning enable each student to develop from demonstrating knowledge and understanding of art and design to establishing themselves as a confident practitioner in their field. Students gain this confidence through experiencing new and different ways of working through navigating the transdisciplinary learning environment of the Barbara Hepworth Building. This state-of-the-art facility brings our internationally recognised expertise across art, design and architecture under one roof to create a physical and intellectual learning environment for the 21st-century practitioner.   Our teaching, learning and assessment offer a variety of learning and assessment opportunities enabling success in meeting and exceeding module and programme learning outcomes. They aim to be inclusive of diversity, to allow you to actively engage in learning and be successfully assessed in a variety of ways. You will benefit from a range of teaching, learning and assessment approaches, combined in ways thought to be most appropriate by the subject specialists to achieve the outcomes specified in Section 12. These will include, for example, lectures, seminars, tutorials, computer-aided learning packages, case study analysis and directed study. Use will be made of the University’s VLE and other e-learning methods where appropriate.  You will have the opportunity to develop your IT skills through the use of specialist software packages.  The VLE provides you with guidance for extended study and links to library resources through MyReading and Summon.   We value assessment-for-learning as much as assessment-of-learning. We strive to ensure there is an appropriate balance of formative assessment to help you improve and summative assessment that confirms your success. Formative assessment will be provided in all modules, as appropriate to the subject matter, to allow you to gain tutor feedback on your work before formal summative assessment takes place. Assessment methods are described in each module specification. All Learning Outcomes in a module are assessed, and the mode of assessment is specified for each Outcome.  The assessment methods used are varied and indicative of current practice in assessing at Masters’ level.  Where appropriate, they are consistent with developing intercultural awareness amongst students from varied backgrounds.   The programme focuses overall on each learner's development of a significant body of art and design practice and understanding how it behaves in the world. This practice-led approach emphasises assessment involving the production of designs, visualisations, drawings, prototypes, events and exhibitions of fully resolved and realised art and design work. The understanding of how this work has developed and behaves in the world is often primarily assessed through portfolios documenting and reflecting upon the developing and underlying concepts and processes underpinning the work.   You will also develop the ability to engage in different types of writing to explicate your learning and development, including proposals and reports. Written research journals can take the form of blogs and other formats. The curriculum is designed in such a way that all modules will be assessed on course work in this way. Students are provided with assignment briefs providing guidance on achieving the learning outcomes set out here in programme and modules specification documents.   The dynamic and reflective transdisciplinary experience of the programmes is sometimes achieved through group learning in the form of seminars, critiques, presentations, exhibitions, live projects, and other event-based forms of teaching and learning. Event-based learning and sharing of practice through forms of presentation can help elucidate critical findings in this respect. Ongoing formative assessment will also make use of self and peer review. Our teaching, learning and assessment strategy focuses ultimately on the individual practitioner, however, and their ability to interact and extrapolate outcomes from contexts. As such, each student is most often assessed on their individual performance in each assessment task and module according to the assessment criteria outlined in each module specification document. In modules where individual students are awarded a group mark reflecting the collaborative achievement of an assessment task (such as in this programme, TMA1402: Creative Innovation and Entrepreneurship), there is also an opportunity to be assessed on an individual evaluation of the project.   Personal Development Planning Personal Development Planning (PDP) is integrated into the course (Appendix B).  Learning Development components are embedded within core-shared modules within the course with additional support from the Academic Librarian.  Full use is made of the University’s Careers and Employment Services to develop your career related development.  The PDP process will be supported via the personal tutor system.   To record and audit PDP, your will be encouraged to develop a portfolio of your development using an appropriate system (e.g. within the VLE).   Teaching delivery The course is delivered on-campus and you are expected to attend the taught delivery sessions (largely studio/workshop/library based).  The course requires significant engagement with studio culture. The course also requires substantial reading of academic materials (e.g.; journal articles, books etc.).  Students are typically required to make an oral contribution to in-class discussions and prepare written work to accompany any portfolio submissions.  Workshop facilities and visualisation tools are used frequently.

Support for Students and their Learning

Each programme has a named course leader, normally based in the subject area, who has responsibility for the smooth operation of the course. The course leaders are also available for academic support, as are module leaders and other teaching staff.

 

Details of academic and personal support within the School and University are listed in the Student handbook

 

In addition, you can also expect support in the form of:

 

  • Course Handbook, updated annually, which gives all relevant information about the course and includes the key regulations and advice on the presentation of written work;
  • Module Handbooks and a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for each taught module;
  • Induction programme for new students;
  • Personal Tutors; Module Leaders
  • All students have access to PDP through regular meetings with your Personal Tutors and the Module Leaders;
  • The course will make any necessary adjustments to ensure that disabled students receive fair and equal treatment;

Criteria for Admission

The University of Huddersfield seeks and encourages applicants in order to widen participation, improve access and apply the principles of equal opportunities.  We provide support for applicants who require additional assistance in order to select the right course of study and make a successful transition to studying at University.  We encourage local, national and international applications.  Further information for International Students can be found on their website.

 

 If you were educated outside the UK, you are required to have International English Language Testing System (IELTS) at a score of 6.0 with a minimum score of 6.0 in writing and a minimum of 5.5 in any single component. If you have alternative qualifications or do not meet the IELTS requirement we also offer a range of Pre-Sessional English Programmes.

 

The University provides opportunities for the accreditation of prior learning (APL) as stated in Section 3 of the Regulations for Awards.

 

The University’s general minimum entry requirements are specified in Section 1.5 of the Regulations for Awards.

 

Every person who applies for this course and meets the minimum entry requirement – regardless of any disability – will be given the same opportunity in the selection process.  General advice and information regarding disability and the support the University can give can be found by contacting student services as follows:

 

Telephone: 01484 472675

Email: disability@hud.ac.uk

 

Further information is available on the disability services website.    

 

Further advice on the specific skills and abilities needed to successfully undertake this course can be found by contacting the admissions tutor and by visiting our course finder website page.

However, the specific entry requirements and admission criteria for the courses are detailed below:

An Honours degree (2:2 or above) in a relevant subject or an equivalent professional qualification.

  • Alternative qualifications and/or significant experience may be accepted, subject to approval. 

If your first language is not English, you will need to meet the minimum requirements of an English Language qualification. The minimum for IELTS is 6.0 overall with no element lower than 5.5, or equivalent will be considered acceptable.

Assessment of your application will also include review of a selection of your work in a portfolio which can also include relevant support and research material. This review can take place through a discussion of the portfolio in person with an academic tutor or, as is the case often with international applicants, through digital submission.

Methods for evaluating and improving the quality and standards of teaching and learning

The School is committed to comprehensive student engagement and works actively with the University of Huddersfield Student Union to support this through the student representative system

 

Within the School students are represented at committee level from Student Panels to the School Board. Individual feedback on the quality and standards of teaching and learning is received through module and course evaluations.

 

An effective external examination system is managed by Registry and all reports are viewed at University, School and course levels.  External examiner and student feedback, as well as all statistical data about the course, is reported through the course committee structure and scrutinised through the University wide annual evaluation process.

Please note

University awards are regulated by the Regulations for Awards (Taught Courses) on the University website.

Quick links to the Regulations for Taught Students, procedures and forms can be accessed on the University website.

Indicators of Quality and Standards

Further information about the University of Huddersfield can be found on the website: www.hud.ac.uk

 

This programme specification document provides a concise summary of the main features of the Programme and the Learning Outcomes that a typical student might reasonably be expected to achieve and demonstrate if he/she takes full advantage of the learning opportunities that are provided.  More detailed information on the Learning Outcomes, content and teaching, learning and assessment methods of each module can be found in the module study guide and course handbook.