The Associate Degree in Media Production addresses the need for Professionals in the field of media production in Macao, covering extensive theoretical knowledge and practical skills, including but not limited to audiovisual production, editing and post production, photography, journalism, scripting, interactive media software design and development.
Year 1 – The first year courses of the Associate Degree in Media Production offer theoretical and practical framework which provide students theoretical and hands on approach to communication design, development of art, and principles and practices of single-camera field production. Besides, specific techniques in creative writing and scripting are also included in the first year course with practice in writing journalistic articles on selected themes.
Year 2 – The second year of the programme emphasises in video production, radio practice and sound production. Students can apply their skills and critical knowledge in audio recording and editing, science and art of music theory, audio technology, and acoustics and film sound in planning and producing in-class assignments and video short-fiction project.
Please click on any specific module to see its description.
Year 1
Integrated learning activities involving all skill areas help students practice and apply the fundamentals of English in a more varied setting and develop more accuracy and control of their spoken and written English. Reading activities promote vocabulary expansion and model accurate structure. Students participate in discussion forums and are introduced to presentation skills for groups and individuals. Logical thinking in both oral and written formats is guided. As well, students are introduced to the five-paragraph essay format and practice writing summative, descriptive and comparative compositions.
Students will concentrate on gaining grammatical control of their communication (subject and verb agreement, modal auxiliaries, singular and plural nouns, pronouns, articles, sentence structure, statements, questions, simple and compound sentences, prepositions, gerunds and infinitives, adverbs and adjectives, punctuation, and some complex sentence patterns). At the end of the module, students should be able to write a paragraph without making major grammatical errors. Development of the five-paragraph essay format will continue and students will practice writing compositions that are opinion-based, persuasive and begin to compare literature from different sources. Development will continue in regard to presentation skills and discussion forums.
This module provides practice integrating those reading skills necessary for academic success at university. These skills include reading for detail, inferring vocabulary in context, finding main ideas, critical reading, understanding sequence, summarizing, recognizing organization, and outlining. In addition, it emphasizes academic vocabulary. Students are introduced to language skills for research and are expected to apply previously taught presentation skills to give more analytical presentations. In this course students are also introduced to basic components of the research paper: abstract, data analysis and interpretation.
This module provides practice integrating those reading skills necessary for academic success at university. These skills include reading for detail, inferring vocabulary in context, finding main ideas, critical reading, understanding sequence, summarizing, recognizing organization, and outlining. In addition, it emphasizes academic vocabulary. Students are introduced to language skills for research and are expected to apply previously taught presentation skills to give more analytical presentations. In this course students are also introduced to basic components of the research paper: abstract, data analysis and interpretation.
This course will cover a varied range of mathematical principles and discuss how techniques of effective thinking and creativity can be taught and learned through mathematics. Such mathematical techniques allow students to create new insights, new ideas, and new solutions, as well as develop critical thinking over a wide range of problems and real-life situations that they may face both on their professional and personal lives.
This module focuses on the concepts, theories and methods of design thinking as a process to foster creativity and innovation.
The module addresses Design Thinking as:
- A way of improving the existing products or conditions. A solution based problem-solving tool.
- A human centered enterprise.
- A mean of dealing with complex social and cultural problems. A tool to address a wide range of issues, ranging from graphic design, to sustainability, at both a micro and macro level.
This Digital Image Processing course is intended to challenge students by providing a theoretical and hands on approach to graphic design. Ultimately, the goal of the course is for students to develop critical and creative approaches to graphic design as a tool for cultural expression and public communication. Thematically speaking particular emphasis will be placed on the ideas formulated by the students during the previous photography course as well as social issues and the diverse cultural identity of the city of Macau.
The goal of this first-year module is to introduce students to the origins and historical development of art. Emphasis is placed on the relationship of design principles to various art forms, including but not limited to fine arts, design, photography, and film. Upon completion, students should be able to identify and analyze a variety of artistic styles, periods, and media. By providing measurable standards for understanding artistic intent and expression through the basic elements of art, students may increase their appreciation of the role of the arts in today’s society. Students are required to visit different museums in Macao as part of course learning activities.
The purpose of this course is to offer students an introduction to Journalism and Public Relations, and an opportunity to practice it.
Journalists today have a variety of story-telling tools but this course will focus on the written word and on the news world, special on TV and press.
The professors will assess students to media language skills and familiarity with the basic tenets of Journalism and Public Relations.
This will be followed by a detailed exploration of journalistic articles written by journalists and professors, looking both at its impact and how it works.
The students have to report journalistic stories. Each story will be comprised of multimedia elements, such as a combination of text, photos, maps, graphics, video and audio. Topics can range from politics to business to human interest to arts and cultural issues.
The projects will require identifying a story idea, researching the topic, arranging and conducting interviews, identifying and collecting the multi-media elements, and writing/editing/assembling the story.
Students will write several journalistic articles on selected themes, and for these works the critical importance of clearly defining the purpose and audience for a work and the need for revision and rewriting is emphasized.
The second part of this course will focused on the Public Relations world. The primary objective of this course is to familiarize students with the basic concepts and principles of Public Relations. It is the foundation course for other courses in Public Relations and a supplemental course for students majoring in communications studies
This program means to introduce the potential of being creative through writing.
The main objective is train students to free their imagination and explore self- expression and creativity through narrative forms. Thus, the program, through practice and experience, intends to consolidate specific techniques and practices for exploring the creative possibilities and potential of writing as a means for communicating emotions or thoughts, describing memories, developing ideas, creating characters and telling stories.
Therefore, we will focus on learning how to experiment freely with the written word stimulating the imagination to communicate, research and express so that students can develop a personal style of creative writing and materialize their own original ideas with a free creative mind.
Art Digital Photography & Video module provides an introduction to the principles and practices of single-camera field production. Students will work in small production teams and gain hands-on experience in planning and producing a short video documentary project. The main goal of this module is to provide students with both applied skills and critical knowledge about the field of video production. Art Digital Photography & Video module lectures challenge the students to think about different storytelling conventions in documentary filmmaking.
The development of thinking skills is fundamental to learning. Students will learn how to develop higher order thinking skills, especially through an appreciation of different philosophic and logic systems and an understanding of important research results from the analysis of human thought processes. In addition, students will learn to reason ethically and morally through readings, discussion of moral dilemmas, and other suitable exercises. They will also learn principled and conceptual thinking and reasoning skills.
Topics will be discussed through case studies and students will learn and understand important concepts of thinking through class and group discussion.
Year 2
Students will learn and apply a variety of public presentation techniques useful for both individual presentations as well as participation in group discussions. An important aspect of the module is that it uses an active learning process whereby students learn a new skill and put it into practice. By the end of the module students are expected to possess a number of public speaking strategies that will help them to prepare any range of public presentations, including proposals, as well as have the opportunity to participate in seminar organization and implementation.
The primary aim of this module is to assist students in preparing themselves for the type of writing required for themes, essay examinations, term papers, and lengthy reports. The principles of rhetorical organization and development are thoroughly presented within the context of each student's language and cultural background. Students will engage in problem solving and idea development through the combination of independent investigation, and consultation with peers.
Students will practice the process, purposes, and strategies of persuasive and explanatory writing. Students read and discuss works by both professional and student writers and explore techniques of argument and persuasion in writing a series of 5-6 essays. The module stresses revision, relies on frequent workshops of student writing, and aims finally to sharpen the students’ ability to use evidence in a reasonable, convincing way.
This is an advanced interdisciplinary writing course module emphasizing critical reading and thinking, argumentative writing, library research, and documentation of sources in an academic setting. Practice and study of selected rhetorics of inquiry (for example, historical, cultural, empirical, and ethnographic) employed in academic disciplines, preparing students for different systems of writing in their academic lives. Throughout this course, students will: significantly improve their academic writing; develop an understanding of how members of a particular discipline conceive of and engage in the rhetorical practices of that discipline; demonstrate understanding of the key conversations, the forms, and the conventions of writing in a particular discipline; gain experience in the construction of knowledge within a discipline and practice using its discourse; read critically and analyze rhetorically writings from a particular discipline and use those lenses to frame their own discourses; write in the different forms and styles of a particular discipline; and develop techniques for conducting research on the Internet and with other electronic databases.
Video Practice course provides an introduction to the principles and practices of single-camera field production. In other words, students will work in small production teams gainning hands-on experience in planning and producing two in-class assignments and a final video short-fiction project. The main goal of this course is to provide students with both applied skills and critical knowledge about the field of video production.
Radio Practice is a module dedicated to explore the concepts and techniques used in radio broadcasting, ranging from conceptualization of a radio show (where the content and form should be adequate to the listening target and medium of diffusion) to the audio mastering of the final product (a primarily technical skill). A practice-based approached is preferred during classes, with hands-on exercises setting the stage for the introduction of theoretical concepts. The three stages of a radio production - pre-production, production and post-production – are presented as the paradigm for all projects.
Music and Audio module introduces students to the science and art of music theory, audio technology, acoustics and film sound.
Digital Video Recording and Production Systems has to do with post-production and delivery systems. From broadcast to webcast, delivery systems are simply and only technologies providing students both applied skills and critical knowledge through the essential of editing process and visual media post-production. Media are also cultural systems as well. Delivery technologies come and go all the time, but communication and media persist as layers. The key concepts covered during this course are:
- Digital video recording;
- Editing vs montage;
- Color grading concepts;
- Post-production and delivery systems.
Programming is the action or process of writing computer programs. In this course, we introduce the fundamental aspects of this practice, oriented towards multimedia applications. Scratch software (MIT) will be used to present the underlying grammar for “talking to a computer”. A practice-based approach will be followed.
This module introduces the basic topics of probability, descriptive and inference statistics. It covers techniques for counting and probability theory but not forgetting inferential statistics (parametric and non-parametric models).
This module is designed to introduce students to the different fields of science and their social and ethical consequences. It is aimed at students who have no background in science or are non-majors in science. The goal is to give students an overview of what science is and how the different fields of science intersects with everyday life. The course will highlight and encourage discussions on current understandings and research trends in the field of science and how these affect our daily lives.
Recent developments in Science relevant to concerns about the nature of life, health and related social issues will be addressed. Through lectures, discussions, debates, research projects, field trips, film-viewing, active-learning activities and workshops, the students will explore such issues as chemistry, stem cell research, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, genetic engineering/GMOs, forensic DNA, space exploration and energy.
