Media Communications and Publishing (Professional Placement Year) BA (Hons)

Publishing is one of the UK’s largest creative industries and needs new tech-savvy creatives who can work collaboratively to harness the many opportunities digital brings, and to reach readers in new and effective ways. This is where our graduates come in. Publishing taken as part of a Combined Award gives you the chance to experiment with various forms of digital and print making and content development. It adds a practical dimension to your study at university and will give you the edge when applying for jobs, in terms of practical industry experience and a stunning portfolio of varied, relevant work. This course is carefully-designed (and taught) by experienced industry professionals to combine core traditional publishing skills of editorial, copywriting, layout and marketing with the latest developments in digital platforms, multimedia content creation and audience development. Our students are the content creators and shapers of a future where print and the handmade; vintage and futuristic sit happily alongside digital. Publishing is being transformed and so you will develop an understanding of user experience, data analysis and how this can inform publishing decisions, and audience development and community-building. We make sure you’ve got the core skills to be confident publishers. You’ll experience a wide range of learning opportunities which will help you develop into a confident content maker and shaper: from working in a collaborative team to develop a social media multimedia content strategy for a literary festival to editing fiction anthologies; using industry-standard software to layout pages for a cookery or history book to copywriting for promotional campaigns; publishing real-time video interviews through social media platforms to creating a new carefully-branded vintage clothing website and commissioning the text and image for this. To find out about Media Communications, please view the UCAS single honours course profile.**Combined Honour Awards**At Bath Spa University many of our undergraduate programmes can be combined, so you don’t have to limit yourself to one subject. If you choose to study a combined award then in Year One you’ll start by studying both subjects in equal depth, then from Year Two you can choose whether to continue with an equally joint course, or a Major/Minor route.**More about the Professional Placement Year**A Professional Placement Year (PPY), traditionally known as a sandwich year, is where a student undertakes a period of work with an external organisation for between 9-13 months. The placement occurs between the students' second and third years of undergraduate study. Students can engage in up to 3 placements to make up the total time and are required to source the placement(s) themselves with support from the Careers and Employability Team.