The Skillset standards doesn’t take into account that the majority of this country’s design studios aren’t any more than 10 people strong, so such refined job roles as Asset Manager very rarely exist. They don’t acknowledge that a designer would require knowledge of such practices, and in many cases may have to collect and record the assets himself.
This kind of view was always going to happen when you realise the contributor’s list is made up of (largely) managing directors and head of departments. Whilst the Skillset standards are indeed relevant, they would undoubtedly be more relevant and specific if they had a more representative example of the industry on their advisory board. This isn’t an area on which the BTEC syllabus improves on either, because – as previously stated - the syllabus is for an educational purpose and therefore requires educational contributors.
It is probably because of the list of contributors that Skillset’s standards are almost exclusively leaned towards technical skills. Creativity skills are vital to any job role in the IM industry, whether you’re a programmer or a graphic designer. So it is a gross misrepresentation to almost completely ignore the importance of creativity skills in the industry. Thankfully this is where the BTEC syllabus has its positives, with a lot of focus on personal development and creative development. If there is a vital area that Skillset need to improve on it would be more focus on personal and creative skills as well as technical skills.
Focusing on personal development does have its downside’s however, and that is seen by BTEC’s mammoth 198 page tome. It is a very real area of improvement for the BTEC syllabus to try and reduce the amount of pages and refine the format of their criteria. If this syllabus is to become more accessible to students BTEC need to start by changing their presentation format. Whereas Skillset’s standards are presented on a concise page each, BTEC’s are regularly four times larger than that for each unit. BTEC could certainly do with taking many pages out and taking a few from Skillset.
Regardless of the amount of pages either has, both BTEC’s syllabus and Skillset’s standards are vital areas of reading to progress into an interactive media professional. Like most things in life, there are areas that can be improved and refined to make each more useful. In an ideal world BTEC would combine with Skillset to create a very relevant and current syllabus. While we’re waiting for the big red man to start wearing ice skates, both will have to suffice.
2 comments:
I understand the point you make about there being no specific creativity skills in the skillset units, but don't you think that if you are working in the industry your creative skills are being used and developed on a daily basis?
In comparison BTEC is an educational body who's role is to encourage creativity in preparation for your chosen career path.
I think with Skillset you have to take the aspects that are relevant to you. Interactive media is a massive area of study and to sum all the job roles up into one document is a very difficult task.
You mention the role of production assistant in your previous post and I agree that if you are working in a 10 man team then there will be no need to have someone gathering all the assets, the designer would probably do this. But I think there are a lot of larger companies and maybe some Production Assistants that would look at this document and say, where is this job role.
I don’t think you can cater for everyone in one broad document.
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