VCE Media statement of intention

Within 21st-century contexts, the Media Arts has become a unique subject that connects students to their digital surroundings and integrates education with the emerging demand for young people to develop media and technological competencies (Goldsmith, 2014). Greatly characterised by its cultural history and the continuous development of modern discourse, the Media Arts often act as a vehicle to prepare students with important knowledge, skills, and digital fluencies that are valuable in the contemporary media landscape. With this understanding, I have developed a VCE unit 3-4 study planner for the Media Arts in conjunction with the VCE Media Study Design, providing students “with the opportunity to examine the media in both historical and contemporary contexts while developing skills in … production”, representation, and communications (VCAA, 2023).

To accompany this, I have created a refined list of primary resources that should be used alongside the VCE planner to extend and influence productive student learning, summarising each resource and its most helpful qualities. Furthermore, I have engaged with a professional development plan with the aims of auditing my current skills and knowledge, ‘addressing the gap’ in said knowledge and setting up an improvement plan to work on with the support of a variety of resources.

Developing a VCE Unit 3-4 Media Planner

In creating the planner, I aimed to first discover and learn the scope of the whole year and how each Area of Study (AOS) or assessment task is worked into the term timeframes. Once understanding this information, I was able to formulate a planner, align key/assessment dates, and set overarching headings for the planner, sectioning each term into weeks so I could begin inputting weekly content. Alongside this, it was important to build my understanding of the media study specifications to successfully identify and implement learning resources and approaches to satisfy the key knowledge and skills in each AOS.

To engage with the planner, each week first outlines the AOS students will be working on in that timeframe and summarises the topic or focus for the week's content, giving students a visual list of what is to be completed and what learning areas they should be working on. Often in VCE media, students will be simultaneously working through multiple AOS’ at one time, so I’ve made it clear what will be a focus and what AOS the task pertains to. Following this, the key knowledge and skills that should be worked upon each week are specifically outlined, linking weekly learning progress to the Study Design’s assessment and learning requirements. The lesson plan/class content included for each week is quite comprehensive, clearly outlining the tasks that will be worked upon throughout the week while providing additional notes for teachers on what content to supplement each task with. The assessment-specific overviews, content recaps, and explicit links to media technical elements and processes should provide students with a lot of support when deciphering their learning responsibilities.

Within the VCE planner, pedagogical approaches are implemented across each week with media best practices to encourage student productivity and engagement with content. The planner has been formed to incorporate an inquiry approach in almost all facets of learning across units 3-4, encouraging students to “[form] their own questions about a topic … [while] having time to explore the answers” (Churchill et al., 2021). Through engaging a consistent inquiry approach, students are afforded the opportunity to kickstart investigations in contexts of interest, set their own goals, and reflect meaningfully on their content engagement (Churchill et al., 2021). Linked closely to this, students are also encouraged to act with agency and “play an active role in deciding what and how they will learn” (OECD, 2019, p. 2). This approach is proven to foster the presence of intrinsic motivation, incentivising students to shape their own learning avenues and complete tasks defined by their interests (OECD, 2019, p. 2). Dispositional Thinking pedagogy is also an approach that is intertwined throughout the planner, spearheaded by AOS tasks and explorations that “trigger and direct an individual’s abilities towards good productive thinking” (Churchill et al., 2021).

Furthermore, a selection of the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS, 2019) has been integrated into the planner to inform teaching approaches and support the variety of learning needs present in the classroom each day. Questioning strategies are largely evident in the planner, used to “[stimulate] curiosity and interest [while] engaging and challenging students” (Churchill et al., 2021). Additionally, strategies such as collaborative learning, goal setting, worked examples, multiple exposures, differentiation, and feedback are all implemented to enhance student learning outcomes (HITS, 2019).

The overall structure of the planner is easy to navigate, following a week-by-week scaffolded learning process while clearly defining AOS outlines. Alongside viewing the core class content and areas of skills/knowledge, students can easily view key assessment dates and interruptions, have direct access to resource links, and check their homework expectations for the current and following weeks. For teachers, the planner provides a list of the most productive pedagogical approaches for the week's provided tasks and further includes guidance for authentication timelines as well as what should be assessed. Best used as a flipped learning tool, the planner provides a timely structure for both students and teachers to follow so they can stay organised and prepared throughout the year.