OUGD401 | Module Evaluation

Context of Practice has been the most challenging module for me, but the most interesting. It was eye opening for me to delve deeper into the meanings behind gender representation and gain a greater understanding overall. The topic itself is very important to me and effects me quite a lot so for that reason it was enjoyable to be able to explore the subject and deepen my understanding.
Essays have never been my strong point so this was perhaps the biggest challenge. It took me some time to understand how to approach the essay; I began by stating my own opinion too much. However, once I cracked the use of academic sources, my words began to fall into place. It was particularly interesting to read John Berger's Ways of Seeing, which gave me a greater understanding of how the media works, in ways I had not considered before.
Referencing has been somewhat a challenge. I had learned Harvard referencing prior to beginning the course but never applied it to an academic essay. I feel that I am still trying to understand how to place references into an essay but I feel that I was reasonably successful this time around. Time management and concentration were the biggest problems for me. As I did not like the idea of writing an essay, I easily put this off and I found concentrating during researching particularly difficult. I found it hard to select the information that was relevant to my work and it took me a long time to sift through large amounts of information which was very time consuming for me. Overall I was pleased with the success of my essay and I exceeding my own personal expectations by writing using academic sources rather than my own thoughts.
I did not feel challenged by the practical work at first, but once I began to explore what I could product I began to feel confused. The workshops we had confused me about the aims of the practical work and I was unsure about how the two should link together. I am still unsure about what I was supposed to achieve now, but I was happy with the outcomes I came up with. I went through several stages of ideas before coming to a conclusion with my work. The main difficulty I experienced was working out what I was trying to achieve with my work. After many hours of exploring ideas I eventually concluded that some form of campaign would be ideal. I felt that my campaign had a strong caption which communicated a strong message, especially combined with my images. I also feel that my design was strong as I received some general feedback in passing that the design appeared professional and was well designed. I am still unsure about my image choices as there is a focus on sex in each, I would have explored more issues related to stereotypes if I had been able to find such well known images.
Overall, CoP was a difficult module for me to understand. I feel that I have a greater understanding now than at the beginning of the year but I am still unsure if my work satisfies the aims of the module. For second year I plan to spend more of my time learning about my topic and breaking down the brief so I can complete it to a higher, more informed standard.