Module manager: Elisabetta Adami
Email: e.adami@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable
Year running 2025/26
This module is approved as a discovery module
This module is approved as a skills discovery module
Digital and social media communication is constantly evolving. To communicate effectively, one needs awareness of ongoing practices, their forms, including visual representations along with language, and consideration of the potentially diverse audiences that populate different media platforms. The module teaches students to assess critically and use effectively the resources of digital environments to communicate with culturally-diverse audiences by means of videos, podcasts, and websites/blogs. It combines lectures with hands-on activities in seminars and practical sessions and concludes in a digital production project. No prior technological skills are required to take this module, as they will be developed in the practical sessions. Please note this is an optional module and runs subject to enrolments. If a low number of students choose this module, then the module may not run and you may be asked to choose another module
The module aims to develop students’ digital intercultural literacy, needed in today’s multicultural digital landscape. Through taught and hands-on activities, this module is designed to help students to:
- understand how communication works in digital environments,
- observe and assess the requirements of each space and the expectations of those participating in it and
- produce digital texts, including short videos, podcasts and websites/blogs to communicate with diverse audiences. The abilities developed in this module will help students develop their research skills and will provide them with practical skills to include in their CV.
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following learning outcomes relevant to the subject:
1. Assess the resources, media and conventions used to communicate in digital environments, and make informed choices to improve their communicative practices
2. Self-reflect onto and assess the character of their intercultural encounters and exchanges, as well as the linguistic, visual and audio resources that are most suitable for each context
3. Create a digital object that explores specific issues of intercultural digital communication and presents them in an informed and engaging way
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following skills learning outcomes:
4. Communicate effectively to diverse audiences using a variety of digital media
5. Collaborate within a group using digital tools
6. Self-reflect on your own communicative practices and adjust them to culturally-diverse contexts
The module will help you to (1) understand how communication works in digital environments, (2) observe and assess the communicative requirements of intercultural contexts and (3) produce digital texts, including short films, audio documentaries and websites/blogs to communicate with an international audience. The module activities will help you to reflect on your own digital communicative practices and to improve them through informed-choices on the basis of the communicative needs in specific contexts.
You will develop knowledge, awareness and direct experience of:
- the resources used in web-based communication, digital video and online interaction
- the issues involved in intercultural communication and strategies to communicate meaning successfully to an international audience
- the linguistic resources and strategies needed for intercultural and international communication
- how to produce digital artefacts including websites, short films and audio documentaries
Areas taught will include:
- Multimodality (i.e., the combination of different audio-visual resources to make meaning), particularly in the relation between digital media platforms, the semiotic resources that they afford, and the individuals’ agency in the uses of both
- The specificities of digital environments, with a focus on communicative practices in different spaces and communities, considering issues of power, creativity and manipulation
- Intercultural communication, through questioning homogenising and ‘othering’ views of culture, with a focus on the mutually transformative dynamics of intercultural encounters
- Linguistic repertoires, multilingualism and identity, and how linguistic resources (including English for International Communication) need to be adapted for intercultural communication in digital environments
Hands-on activities will include seminars and practicals on the design and production of digital artefacts, such as videos, audio documentaries and websites, and related issues (including ethics and copyrights).
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supervision | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Lecture | 11 | 1 | 11 |
| Practical | 3 | 3 | 9 |
| Seminar | 4 | 2 | 8 |
| Private study hours | 170 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 30 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
Monitoring of student progress will be done:
- through informal formative assessment during the seminars, in which students will be asked to discuss their observations of communication practices in digital environments
- through the hands-on practicals and supervision preparing for the group and individual projects, which will monitor also teamwork dynamics
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | Group digital video and/or audio project | 40 |
| Coursework | Individual website project | 60 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Resit will be done in the next available exam session. In the resit the group project will be carried out individually.
The reading list is available from the Library website
Last updated: 30/04/2025
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team