So media one is over. It was one hell of a journey, from the highs to the lows, but I feel like I really learned a lot and I wouldn’t take it back for one second. (Okay, I totally ripped that off MasterChef.)

Seriously, though, I did learn a lot – so much that I put it in a graph! (One day I will escape maths.) It’s a great launching pad from which I can explain my learning process throughout the semester.

Let’s start with prompt one, which rises relatively steadily over the weeks. The plateaus are the weeks in between our assessments, because I found the moments I learnt the most about creating media objects were when I was practically doing it. The feedback process as well as my own investigation into new film-making techniques allowed me to learn about the media-making process. However, it’s important to note that it wasn’t just the practical elements that helped me learn about the media-making process. When we had guest lecturer Adrian Miles come and talk to us, he mentioned that what separated us as uni students from others in more hands-on courses was our understanding of the theory behind the practice. Thus, I’ve decided to link in this blog I did about Lost in La Mancha. While it’s about something from my textual crossings course, I reflected upon our lectorial on collaboration and thus media-making practice.

As for prompt two, there is a big spike at the start of the semester because that was when I was coming to grips with the key theoretical concepts of the course. It was a steep learning curve for me to rethink my definition of ‘media’ and look at it in a whole new light. So for this section, I’ll link in one of my earliest posts, media girl in a media world. Based on an in-lectorial exercise, this made me think a lot about the importance of media in the world around me.

Thirdly, we have creative and critical thinking about my own media work. This increased evenly throughout the semester, as I found that not only did the feedback from the assessments help me think about my own work, but I could also apply just about every theoretical concept I learnt in the lectorials to my work as well. That’s why for this section I’ve decided to link in my last post, the reflection on our group assessment. I could have chosen an earlier assessment, but I feel this last post, being so late in the semester, reflects a wider variety of the skills I have learnt when it comes to assessing my own work.

Finally, we come to the blog. There is a big spike at the start of the semester, because I felt the blog helped me process the initial big concepts to which I was being introduced. The second spike at the end of the semester was when I started to really get a handle on some of the concepts I was learning and started to really enjoy exploring the complex ideas in all my classes. So, my two final blog posts are both ones I enjoyed writing, because I was able to connect ideas learnt in media to other topics. In Pretty in Pink, I was able to discuss the concept of semiotics within the context of my own life and beliefs. In Remix, I was able to link one of Daniel Binns’ lectures to some work I’d found really interesting in textual crossings.

Well that, as they say, is all, folks. Have a great break (or winter, if you’re not a bludgy uni student like me but an actual working stiff). See you next semester!

So it’s d-day (due day) for our group project and the final assessment for semester one. As of five o’clock this afternoon, I will no longer be a media one student (cries quietly). But enough of the mushy stuff, I’ll save that for my final blog post. For now, I want to do a reflection on my group assessment. For those of you who haven’t been following it, our project was inspired by the topic ‘audiences’, and we chose to explore the interactivity of the modern audience through a multimedia webpage that you can find here: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/2015-media1-projects-participationgeneration/

Overall, I’m quite proud of it. The first thing that I think worked really well was the way in which we used vlogs throughout the site. Technically, they were not particularly hi-fi, but that was the idea; we wanted to replicate the style of online vloggers as we thought they were a good example of media creators who value audience input. This theme of replicating interactive media in our own site continued through our use of an app, a Twitter feed, hashtag and embed button, and a Facebook like button. Although we did not have a wide audience and thus these elements were not particularly well-used, I thought our incorporation of them was a really clever way to demonstrate the points we were making regarding the way modern technology allows for greater audience interactivity. I was also really pleased with the variety of media we used. We had print, video, image, app and social media all embedded in our site, and I think this aligned well with our topic because we found that interactive audiences are not just limited to online or social media but can be found across a range of media forms. I am very proud of my two team-members; I thought Dusty put in a lot of effort finding good people to interview and taking the time to do so, and Jac’s use of a projector in his photoshoot added a level of creativity to our project.

However, with any project, there are always going to be things that you would have done differently. One thing I think we could have done better was create more links to external sites. We wanted to incorporate audience interactivity into our own site, and so allowed our audience to navigate through the site at their own pace with a multitude of different internal links. However, to heighten their level of control over the content I would have included more external links. I tried in my article to link in most of my sources, but if I had been more organised I could have done more. I also think that while I liked that we all went in different directions with the project, it made it a little bit difficult to come to a conclusion. We did make a collaborative conclusion that somewhat solved this problem, but I think that our conclusions needed to be a bit more comprehensive and alike. Our organisation on the whole probably could have been better; we did not struggle to finish on time however I think it would have helped the process if we’d had more of a chance to see each other’s products earlier on and give some feedback or incorporate their findings into our own final products.

Obviously there are some key lessons to be learned here about collaboration. One thing I thought worked really well in our group was the process of delegation. By segmenting the work clearly into three sections, we each had set tasks to complete and there was no confusion over who should be doing what and everything got completed. Our team meetings also worked really well. Although sometimes we would be late or have to miss one, by just having that check-in time we were able to assess our progress and really just give each of us individually peace of mind that we were on the right track. I also learnt the importance of getting on socially with your team members. We were probably quite lucky in that we were three people that just happened to get on, but we did go out together at least once and in the future I think this would be a good technique to adopt to ensure that all team members can interact positively and successfully. I also learnt that you have to have trust when working collaboratively; not everyone is going to work in the same manner as you but that’s ok, you just have to trust that they are capable and will do what they need to do.