Yesterday there was an open day at the University of Gloucestershire.
I went to have a look at a couple of coursed which I think look interesting – Radio Production and Journalism.
The course leader for Radio Production spoke first about what sort of things we’d study on the course – things like ‘Radio Production Skills’, ‘Building Audiences’, ‘Making & Presenting Music Radio’ and ‘Live Broadcast’.
Afterwards, we made our own little radio show. I volunteered to be technician, someone else took the role of presenter, and the remaining two were guests.
What we had to do was simple: a radio show which had an intro from the presenter, then a track, then an interview between the presenter and guests, a pre-recorded package and another track.
As technician, I took my place in the control room and put the mics up at the right time, played in the music and the pre-recorded package, which seemed to work well.
The studio is slightly different to what we have at Corinium Radio – whereas we have a self-op studio and I’ll run the desk and present at the same time, the studio built in the Radio Production room has a control room, while the presenter and guests sit in the live room on the other side of the glass.
We then went to see the SU [Student Union] radio station – Tone Radio. They broadcast online and is run by students, for students, and there’d be opportunities for me to get involved if I do go to the University of Gloucestershire.
Then we went to see Journalism. We were a bit late – they’d already finished, but we managed to speak to the course leader after everyone had gone. When we got their, they asked if I wanted to have a go at reading a news bulletin… so I took their sheet of paper and sat in the live room, and read it. It wasn’t that hard. It was like being on Corinium Radio, and the students who were in the control room said that I had a good radio voice! 😀
Afterwards we had a look at the course map on the university’s website; the Journalism course seems to be more academic than the Radio Production course – there’ll be several modules looking at the law, and ethics. But there will be practical modules as well – for example the Journalism room has its own television news studio, radio control & live rooms. The Radio Production course would be more specialized towards radio, whilst Journalism would be more general, and look at everything from TV and radio journalism to print (newspapers) and online journalism.
A useful thing to note, is that the courses are linked to the Skillset Media Academy, and the Journalism course (I’m not sure about the Radio Production one – I can’t remember), is BJTC [Broadcast Journalism Training Council] accredited. This basically means that the courses meet certain standards which the employers look for, and that the courses are relevant to the industry.
Both these courses are currently at the Pittville Campus, and if you’ve been keeping an eye on the news recently then you’ll know that the university will be selling it very soon. Both the Radio Production and Journalism courses, along with Tone Radio, will be moving to the Park Campus, which will have a new media section.
The decision I’ve got to make now, is whether I’d prefer something which gives a more general overview, or whether I do want to specialize.
