Back to College / FDA 2

Enrollment week.

Your Enrolment with Hastings College will be in the Morning of September 27th, please ensure that you bring with you your proof of grant ( I hope that you have all reapplied for funding from LEA! ) or fees if you are self funding. You also need to enroll online with the University of Brighton, this is imperative as it will release your student loan.

The start date for your course is Wednesday September 29th when you will meet in room SP 4110 at 9.30am.

( SP4110 is your Graphic Communication base room, situated on the 4th floor of the Station Plaza building - front facing to the extreme left as you leave the lift or staircase.)

All course information for the coming year will be given to you on this day, I shall also introduce your timetable and discuss the module and marking system for year 2 ( it's very different to year 1 ) and during the first week I shall also spend time with each of you for an informal tutorial. Station Plaza is very different to Archery Road - and it will take you most of this week to get used to the new environment - but it's much better than Archery Road and a great working and learning environment.

As second years - you are timetabled for contact teaching every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday during term time ( you will be given a timetable for the year on day 1 ), however - the move to the new building has enabled us to assign you a dedicated desk space throughout the week - and you have access to this space every day. This is a really important point - you are all H.E. students on a full time course - and whilst I know that some of you have work and financial commitments - the expectation is that you are studying full time, five days every week during term time. It was noted by the University at the Examination Board that students at the University of Brighton must not consider the two days they are not contact taught as 'free' days. ( I will address this directly on day one )

Archery Road had major drawbacks with space and facilities - I was very unhappy that we were forced to split the room between two groups, and moving you down to the other studio on Wednesdays did not help. To this end we have fought to give every student dedicated personal desk space, 5 days a week. This means that you have full time access to the studio - the desk space is yours to use - and take full advantage of. We have the best studio in the building - and it's really important that you use it fully - if it's noticed that desks are empty - we may find ourselves moved to a smaller room and back to where we were before with desk sharing. Myself and David have gone to a great deal of trouble to give you the best possible working environment, so make sure you use it!!

There will be some changes to the way we use computers and printing - but as before, you may bring your own laptop into college if it's what you prefer, much of the college has WiFi access and there are additional computer facilities throughout the building, but under no circumstances should you attempt to connect your personal computer directly to the network at any of the spare points in our room.

You will be undertaking competition briefs next year, The first of which will be YCN ( Young Creative Network ) - they will not have released the briefs before September, but you can access the website now at www.ycnonline.com. You will need as much time as possible to consider and select your brief, so bookmark it as soon as possible.

You are all aware that work placements must be competed this year as a statutory part of your course requirement. You were briefed on this last year and we shall expect to see evidence of your progress at the start of the year.

On your first day back, we shall spend the afternoon presenting and discussing the summer project. This brief is not marked as part of a module and does not contribute to your final award - but the presentation will be formal, and you should consider it as a ‘dry run’ of how the year will continue.

Keep your eye on the blog - new stuff comes up every day, and email me if you have any questions.

Richard


For your reference the term dates are as follows ( full week dates - Monday to Friday )

Autumn Term      27th September
Half Term            25th October ( Return Nov 1st )
Term Ends           10th December   

Spring Term         6th January
Half Term             21th February ( Return 28th Feb )
Term Ends            1st April

Summer Term      26th April
Half Term            30th May ( Return June 6th )
Term Ends           24th June