University fees have increased while student loans and grants have been squeezed over the past few years and students UK-wide have felt the impact. Adam Walsh spoke to several students at York St John University to see how well they had been coping with budgeting for university life.
Credit for cover image – www.gotcredit.com
Contextualising Statement:
During the production of this artefact, the task at hand being to collect the evidence for and then effectively edit together an audio vox pop on the subject of student life, I was able to meet all of the learning objectives set out by this module.
As far as the aim of this piece of audio is concerned, its target is the student audience as well as parents or those with an interest in how well students are able to manage their finance. The music was selected to add a comic effect, as some of the answers are somewhat ludicrous and I felt this would be the best way to put across the answers to a prospective audience as it seemed light-hearted, somewhat oxymoronic towards the subject matter.
In order to work on this task well enough in the limited time and equipment available, there was a requirement to work both with a partner and individually. The limited time and equipment at hand for the gathering of audio files for the project meant that in together in a pair it was necessary to make the fullest use of the time available. In order to counter this obstacle, it was decided within my group that we would, at the possible disgruntlement of potential interviewee’s, switch SD cards over mid-interview in order to gather multiple responses for both of our respective work simultaneously. Despite running the risk of annoying those people willing to help us in this endeavour, the method proved effective. People were understanding and willing to wait the few seconds that was required to switch across the SD cards. This coupled with the physical editing of audio files and the mixing of music to create the vox pop clearly demonstrates the meeting of the second Learning Objective for this task, as correct and effective collaboration and individual working was required to provide the finished product.
This being the first task that was attempted during this academic year meant that this was the first time that I had used to kit available. This led to a number of issues in the editing stage, as the recording files were at drastically different volumes. However, after this was realised and some more experience had been gained with the software and kit available, this was adjusted as much as possible to even out the speakers over the minute long vox. It being the first task also meant I did not create my own risk assessment as it was not a module that had yet been completed at the time. However, no accidents occurred during the recording of the audio files that were used, and in terms of general safety, great care was taken with the equipment during its set-up, use and putting away.