ADD (Advanced Digital Design) has further refined it’s school-wide analogue & digital strategy this year to encompass a broader, enhanced digital literacy, influenced by employer’s graduate expectations, NSS/Student feedback, and emerging innovative practice.
The programme now delivers a constructively aligned ‘essential’ digital literacy to all students across the school from undergraduate to postgraduate, with the aim to provide all students with a deep understanding of Graphic principles, Technical drawing production, 3D Modelling, Visualization and Fabrication. In addition to this, we have formed an optional ‘advanced’ digital literacy to engage with emerging methodologies, exploring BIM, Computation, Simulation, IoT, Digital Twins, Game engines, and Immersive technologies (AR/VR).
The return to campus post-pandemic, has provided us an opportunity to address barriers such as digital poverty by enhancing the digital infrastructure of the school. To accomplish this, we have initiated significant upgrades to our CAD labs at both MMU & UoM with the latest high-end Precision workstations and VR headsets, meaning students can access even the most demanding cutting-edge software for free, both on campus, and remotely.
To enhance the student experience, we have increased our daily drop-in clinic to 5 days per week, ensuring all students can access digital design support with one of our specialists. We have also restructured our VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) to ensure information and guidance on software access, recommended hardware, learning resources and our own digital skills library are easily accessible.
At MSA, we proudly promote ‘no house style’, allowing students to develop and refine their own unique design language over the course of their studies, and producing a diverse range of innovative outputs from each atelier and course that meet or exceed industry expectations. The continuous upgrades in our analogue & digital strategy, as well as digital infrastructure have been a great facilitator of this and one that has received exceptionally positive student feedback.
