3 EC
Semester 1 & 2, period 2, 3, 5, 6
5224PSGC3Y
Humans are visually-oriented animals. If you manage to effectively control the way information is offered visually, you stand a much better chance of getting your point across and presenting yourself professionally. For example, a captivating graphical abstract will reach a larger audience than any carefully-considered, well-crafted text. Effectively grabbing your audience’s attention is at least as important as what you have to say.
In this course, professionals from the creative field will teach you the basic theory and skills required to let you produce visual communications that stick out from the grey masses. You will learn about basic pricnicples of design and composition and how these can be applied to best convey your story. You will use graphical software to produce professionally-looking designs and motion graphics and you will also draw on paper- which is not only fun but can also be very useful in various settings. Of course, by the time you finish you won't be an expert yet, but you will have gained a basic toolkit allowing you to further develop your skillset.
Throughout the course, you will work on a personal project, allowing you to bring your learned skills into practice.
(free) graphical software Gimp, Figma and Lottielab
further materials will be available on the course Canvas page
Activity | Hours | |
Presentatie | 3 | |
Werkcollege | 18 | |
Self study | 63 | |
Total | 84 | (3 EC x 28 uur) |
Additional requirements for this course:
By being present and actively participating in group discussions and class assignments you are contributing to the learning environment as well as the learning process of yourself and others. The in-class assignments and discussions enable and promote the achievement of the course learning objectives.
If you are unable to attend a session, contact the course coordinator prior to that session to discuss your options for passing the course. Missing more than 25% will automatically result in a negative assessment (fail; “NAV”) of the course.
| Item and weight | Details |
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Final grade | |
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Final grade |
In this course you are assessed for your final assignment with a pass (AVV) /fail (NAV) based on a rubric.
The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl
The course consists of 6 sessions where theory studied at home is applied into more in-depth in-class assignments and a final session where students present their final product.
The Professional Skills- Graphic communication and facilitation credits do not count towards a cum laude degree.
Artificial intelligence (AI), and specifically GenAI, tools are becoming commonplace in society. Although the tools are easy to access, using them effectively requires advanced skill levels. We think AI can be a useful tool, but can also hinder learning by offering ‘shortcuts’ rather than stimulating active learning.
Therefore, we believe that it is important to first learn skills such as writing, critical thinking, and self-reflection before leveraging AI tools to support these processes. We designed our assignments and exercises to be done without AI to achieve the best learning outcomes. During the Professional Skills courses we focus on the skills themselves, not on AI use. Furthermore, using AI requires additional, AI specific, skills as well.
We expect you to not use AI for Professional Skills courses, as these will likely subtract from your learning. If you believe you have a valid use case for (Gen)AI during one of these courses, please discuss this with your teacher first. Note that the use of (Gen)AI for exercises or assignments without the explicit consent of the teacher may result in referral to the exam committee.