University takes on divides with fully-accessible Film and TV degree

Coventry University will help transform access to higher education within the film and TV industry with the introduction of a new and fully online postgraduate degree.

The Film and TV MA  will tackle gender and regional divides, and offer a way for professionals to keep up with the fast-paced industry - by completely removing a need for classroom teaching.

The one-year course running from September allows students to learn from anywhere in the world, and to model more than 80 per cent of learning on their own needs in a step towards fully-tailored education for the workplace.

Offering such heavily personalised content and being fully accessible around existing life and work patterns, the MA will benefit parents returning to work, career-changers and people unable to take time off or move to study. 

Carl Schoenfeld, course director, said:

“This is all about helping emerging and mid-career professionals who don’t want a ready-made course, which is something quite new in teaching.

Education is changing. Gone are the days when you waited until 9pm on a Thursday to watch a programme on television – we’re used to having what we want when we want it, and education is no different.

There will never be one course to fully benefit the different skills of writers, film makers, and someone in post-production, so improving education while working in those fields isn’t something you generally associate with university.

But if you can tailor learning to suit the needs of a student and what they’re already working on, then everything changes. We want to give students the tools they need to learn wherever they are.

The idea that someone can be filming for six months in the Amazon but still engaged on a degree course built around their needs is fantastic and a way for universities to actively work towards widening access. 

Also, for people taking time off to train or have families, so much changes while they’re gone that it can be hard to go back. That’s the sort of thing which can then fuel a gender imbalance in the film industry.

 It’s about engaging with the industry and finding out what one person will benefit from, not having all students in a lecture hall doing the same thing.”

The course is aimed at anyone working within any aspect of film and television, and will be taught through web seminars and one-to-one contact with industry-experienced tutors. 

Each student can tailor more than 80 percent of the year-long course to suit their own personal development needs within the industry.