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Digital Media Technology - China and UK Delivery - BSc (Hons)

Currently viewing course to start in 2025/26 Entry.

Digital Media development requires a comprehensive understanding of image, video and mixed reality processing. BSc (Hons) Digital Media Technology, aims to develop you with the versatile and rich combination of skills that will enable you to design and develop tomorrow’s digital media products....

  • Level Undergraduate
  • Study mode Full Time
  • Award BSc (Hons)
  • Start date September 2025

This course is:

Open to International Students

Overview

I'm a third year Music Technology student. When I was looking for Music Technology courses, Birmingham City University really stood out to me. I was keen on attending a Bachelor of Science and the course really focussed on the science aspects as well as maintaining the artistic elements of music and sound production. The support of the tutors has been fantastic. The professional standard and the facilities on campus are great due to their accessibility around the clock. The easy access to studios has been extremely helpful in completing my work and keeping on top of deadlines. At BCU, there's been a heavy focus on employability and what I could do with all aspects of my degree. The university has organised the industrial mentor forum, a space where students can communicate with alumni and people within the industry. The Acoustics Special Interest Group also consisted of more bespoke talks from people within the acoustics industry about different aspects of the work and how individual companies run. This is how I developed contact with an acoustic consultancy to complete my placement year. I act as an Acoustic Technician at Dragonfly Consulting. It went so well that I'm returning upon my graduation to continue working with them. The university has given me opportunities I don't think I would have received anywhere else.

I'm a second year computer science student studying at Birmingham City University. As a Computing student, there are plenty of computer labs available. There's entire rooms filled with Cisco networking equipment, as well as laptops that can be rented out to complete your work. Several of the facilities have now moved over to STEAMhouse, which is a £70 million build that is now the new home for Computing and Digital Technology students. One of the main things for me was getting employment at the end of my university degree. And Birmingham City University offers a wealth support for moving into the work environment. The course is a very important focus and a very industry focussed as well. I've been offered roles as a student demonstrator for Python programming. I found that the best way to show that you've understood something is to be able to teach somebody else.

I'm studying Computer Networks and Security. So far, I've really enjoyed my time at BCU. I felt really included within the student community. For the past two years, I've been involved in Innovation Fest. This is an annual event that showcases student work from the faculty. A lot of employers visit this festival, which allows us to widen our professional network. Throughout my time at BCU, I've had some time to

develop a relationship with the Careers+ team and go through tailoring my CV and my cover letters with them. Because of this, I have been presented with many opportunities which they have tailored to me and my needs. Through this, I was encouraged to apply for the women in tech competition.

So it was a one week program and I was working with the team from Cyferd. It's a software company,

and I successfully won and have taken up the placement year with them as a Junior Development Lead.

I look forward to coming back and applying the skills I've learnt throughout my placement and applied them within my studies.

Digital Media development requires a comprehensive understanding of image, video and mixed reality processing. BSc (Hons) Digital Media Technology, aims to develop you with the versatile and rich combination of skills that will enable you to design and develop tomorrow’s digital media products.

Birmingham Institute of Fashion and Creative Art

You can now gain a prestigious British degree while completing all or part of your studies in China, thanks to a new collaboration with a leading Chinese university. The Birmingham Institute of Fashion and Creative Art (BIFCA) is a partnership between Birmingham City University and Wuhan Textile University (WTU) based in Wuhan, China.

BIFCA offers a selection of creative arts degrees taught with the opportunity to spend two years of your studies at WTU’s fantastic Wuhan campus and two years in the exciting city of Birmingham, or the full four years at WTU.

More about BIFCA

STEAMhouse building exterior

Introducing STEAMhouse

STEAMhouse is a centre for technology, innovation, creative thinking, prototyping and business development. Our £70 million pound building is the home for all of our Computing courses.

Find out more

This course is open to International students.

What's covered in this course?

You’ll have the opportunity to practice professional skills by delivering the course content in a project-driven and practice-like way, in specialist labs containing the latest hardware and software. Your skills will be further developed through the group project based module which take place in year two of the programme.

We also have well-established links with companies such as BBC, Microsoft and Cisco, ensuring that the programmes remain current and relevant to industry. The course also enables you to interact with potential employers by collaborating with industrial partners and participating in various events throughout the academic year.

Graduates will be equipped for careers related to media and computing. You could explore careers in multimedia development, web and interactive application development and multimedia content development.

You’ll also have the opportunity to take a Professional placement year between your second and third year. This is highly recommend as it will give you an invaluable opportunity to hone your expertise, try out a potential career path and get relevant workplace experience that is valued by so many employers.

Our Digital Media Technology degree is part of the School of Computing and Digital Technology, located at the Millennium Point Building as part of the City Centre Campus, in the heart of Birmingham. Millennium Point was built as a focus for science, technology and education within Birmingham and the wider region, providing an excellent environment for exploring advanced technology.

Accredited By

This course is accredited by:

  • Athena Swan Bronze Award

This course is a unique blend of media and computing I could not find on any other course. It is challenging yet rewarding and provides me with a sense of accomplishment when assignments are completed. The broad range of the modules allows me to have a wide range of options when choosing my career path.

Harvir Singh, Second Year Student

Why Choose Us?

  • Brand new facilities at STEAMhouse This state-of-the-art building is the new home for our Computing courses. Based at our expanding City Centre Campus, this unique centre will give you access to outstanding facilities and teaching spaces, as well as opportunities to collaborate with people and businesses across multiple sectors and work on real industry-based projects.
  • Preparation for Industry - You will embrace a combination of creative and technical disciplines that will enable you to work and develop a career in the fast-growing and highly competitive digital media sector.
  • Highly qualified academics - You will learn from an experienced team of academics and practitioners who offer not only academic expertise, but also current industry relevance, practice and business acumen.
  • Excellent campus facilities - If you choose to study part of your course in the UK, you will be based at our City Centre Campus, right in the heart of Birmingham which houses cutting-edge facilities, including the largest University TV studio, within a purpose-built Media Centre at The Parkside Building.
  • Multiple learning techniques - Creative network opportunities, multimedia events and guest speakers bring the insights, contacts and the realities of the media world to your studies.

Open Days

Join us for an on-campus Open Day where you'll be able to learn about this course in detail, chat to students, explore our campus and tour accommodation.

Next Open Day: 24 November 2024

Book your place

Entry Requirements

These entry requirements apply for entry in 2025/26.

All required qualifications/grades must have been achieved and evidenced at the earliest opportunity after accepting an offer to help confirm admission and allow for on-time enrolment. This can also include other requirements, like a fee status form and relevant documents. Applicants can track their application and outstanding information requests through their BCU mySRS account.

Essential requirements

Current Birmingham City University students - one year or one semester in China

The courses delivered by BIFCA are equivalent to the respective courses run at Birmingham City University in the UK. Therefore any current Year 1 students who wish to spend one year or one semester studying abroad may be able to spend their entire Year 2 or half of their Year 2 studying the same modules in Wuhan, China.

To be eligible, you must have successfully passed all the required modules and obtained the credits for your Year 1 study. If you wish to express your interest, please contact us: bifca@bcu.ac.uk

Chinese students

BIFCA will recruit the highest performers in the China National Art and Design examination. If you're from China and are eligible to apply to study the course, you'll be expected to pass the required provincial art test.

If you live in Hubei Province you'll be required to achieve minimum Tier 1 level in the Gaokao matriculation examination.

If you live outside Hubei Province you'll be required to meet the provincial educational requirement for Sino-British jointly delivered courses.

Other international students

If you're a non-Chinese, non-Birmingham City University student, you'll be required to complete an application to BIFCA showing evidence of equivalent qualifications and have a minimum of a Level 5 IELTS.

A portfolio will be required to support the application. If you wish to express your interest, please contact us: bifca@bcu.ac.uk

Further information

Visit international student entry requirements. If you're unsure of your eligibility, please contact us: bifca@bcu.ac.uk

If you have a qualification that is not listed, please contact us.

Fees & How to Apply

Please select your student status to view fees and apply
  • UK Student
  • International Student

UK students

Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.

Award: BSc (Hons)

Starting: Sep 2025

  • Mode
  • Duration
  • Fees
  • Full Time
  • 4 years
  • TBC

International students

Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.

Award: BSc (Hons)

Starting: Sep 2025

  • Mode
  • Duration
  • Fees
  • Full Time
  • 4 years
  • TBC

Guidance for UK students

UK students applying for most undergraduate degree courses in the UK will need to apply through UCAS.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) is a UK organisation responsible for managing applications to university and college.

Applying through UCAS

  1. Register with UCAS
  2. Login to UCAS and complete your details
  3. Select your course and write a personal statement
  4. Get a reference
  5. Pay your application fee and submit your application

How to apply

Chinese students
If you're a Chinese student, BIFCA applications are made through the Gaokao system.
International students
If you're an international student, please email bifca@bcu.ac.uk to discuss your application.

Course in Depth

Year One

In order to complete this course a student must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Year Two

In order to complete this course a student must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Professional Placement Year (Optional)

In order to qualify for the award of Bachelor of Science with Honours Digital Media Technology with Professional Placement, a student must successfully complete all of the Level 6 modules below above as well as the following Level 5 module:

Final Year

In order to complete this course a student must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Download course specification

Download now

Course Structure

The programme is based around the five themes of industry, production, design, technology and scripting.

The industry theme is intended to provide you with an understanding of the business and financial framework of the media industry, an appreciation of the impact of new technologies and to develop skills for project management and entrepreneurship.

The production theme focuses on the principle features of multimedia design and production including the planning, technical, and practical processes involved in the production of visual media.

When exploring the design theme, you will deal with the principles of design and visual communication, and exploration of the creative process. A significant proportion of the theme is focused on animation and 3D-modelling.

The technology theme examines the principles of analogue and digital technologies associated with the acquisition, processing, storage and transmission of signals associated with audio visual practice, application and system design.

The scripting theme develops knowledge and skills in scripting to produce interactive web and rich internet applications.

Student stories

Li Shuxin

Li Shuxin decided to join this course as she felt it has a perfect combination of art and science, with both the emotional side of art and design and the rational side of technology. She chose this course to learn about all aspects of art and design and to use the latest technology to produce art-related works.

Li is now a 3D game animation designer. She is able to use skeletal systems to create complex character animations, sensitive to character body, expression language and rhythm, with smooth, natural animation effects.

Sylvia Chen

Sylvia Chen chose this course to learn more about digital media technology, and improve her practical skills. Her favourite module was Website Production as she enjoyed being able to study the whole process of website production, from early user research to final testing and improvement.

Sylvia is currently completing product analysis work in a clothing company, using database programming and MATLAB, which helps her build the customer information database more efficiently, and helps her to better analyse user needs. Sylvia also assists the department with video editing using the skills she learned on film and television post-production.

Athena Swan Bronze Award
Athena Swan Bronze Award

We have successfully secured the Athena SWAN Departmental Bronze Award recognising a commitment to gender equality.

The Athena Swan Charter is a framework which is used across the globe to support and transform gender equality within higher education (HE) and research.

Employability

Employment Opportunities

Graduates of BSc (Hons) Digital Media Technology have enjoyed excellent employment prospects, with many successfully entering the media industry sector working both as freelancers and employees within digital media agencies. Graduates also find employment in wide-ranging companies and organisations increasingly dependent on the expertise our graduates have to offer.

Graduates have pursued careers in web development, interactive content development, media technology consultancy, corporate training and publishing, e-commerce and multimedia marketing.

Placements

You'll be encouraged to further enhance your career prospects by including an industrial placement in your course. This takes place after the second year of study and extends the course duration to four years.

As well as providing the workplace experience sought by many employers, a placement provides an invaluable opportunity for you to further develop your practical expertise, earn money and try out a potential career path. Our placements team support you throughout the placement process.

Full details can be found on the School placements page.

International

Birmingham City University is a vibrant and multicultural university in the heart of a modern and diverse city. We welcome many international students every year – there are currently students from more than 80 countries among our student community.

The University is conveniently placed, with Birmingham International Airport nearby and first-rate transport connections to London and the rest of the UK.

Our international pages contain a wealth of information for international students who are considering applying to study here, including:

Facilities & Staff

[00:00:02] Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the computing tour for Birmingham City University.

[00:00:05] I'm Alex, a second year Computer Science student sitting here today, and I'll be taking you around the facilities here at BCU.

[00:00:11] Right now we're in STEAMhouse. If you're coming on to a computing course, you may be spending time here doing your Innovation Fest project, where you'll be presenting your project that you worked on to industry professionals. So STEAMhouse is a £72 million conversion of the old bike factory that used to be here.

[00:00:31] This is one of the larger learning spaces that we have here at STEAMhouse, completely built around computing. The entire building is modular. All these walls can be opened up and these classes can be made gigantic.

[00:00:43] So here's another space here at STEAMhouse for, sort of like, breakout rooms or for independent learning places you can go as a group to work on projects. To the left of us, there is the business space where visitors come in and they can work on projects there and also allows for students and staff members to integrate with the tech industry. If you'd like to learn more about STEAMhouse, the video link in description. And now I'm going to take you over to Millennium Point.

[00:01:13] Here we are at Millennium Point. This is the level four project space, the space you'll be using in term time to work on things such as the Innovation project. It is also the home of the Maker's Lab, which I'll be showing you in a little bit. It's a completely transformative and modular space.

[00:01:28] Recently, Birmingham City University has spent six and a half million pounds in revamping their Millennium Point building. It's also the area where we will be holding industry events. One of the things that I want to show you very quickly is the Lapsafe here. So Birmingham City University has one of the largest collections of Lapsafes in Europe. And they're not just here in the Millennium Point building. There's also ones over in Parkside and Curzon as well as STEAMhouse. You're allowed to take a laptop out if you haven't got one personally, and you can use it while you're at university for about six or so hours at a time. We also not only have Windows laptops, but also MacBooks.

[00:02:10] So here we are in the Makers Lab, and this is where you'll be spending time as a first year student working on the Innovation facilities there. Basically, this is where the magic happens, right? So in this room is a bunch of component parts and things to work with your systems such as 3D printers.

[00:02:24] So what you can do is you build a schematic up in the software. We send it to the machines and they can print out component parts for your project. It's also a bunch of different other components here at the university that it offers to students that they can use for their projects, such as Arduino, Mark Controllers, and Raspberry Pi is sort of like the heart of your system. You write some code, you flash onto the microcontroller, then it can control the system that you've attached it to. Over here, we've also got a bunch of component parts even using such as light sensors and motion sensors and buttons and keypads and things like that as well.

[00:02:59] So we've got a bunch of previous projects here as well. Here's Sign Genie which is a sign language interpreter, you sign in front of it and it will send back the sign language on the screen here. You can find out more about this project in description below, showing you how they built it from start to finish.

[00:03:16] We also have laser cutting services at University, so if you need, you know, a frame cut out for your project, for example, that we've got here, you can use the laser cutter and cut out little component parts that all fit together as a housing for your project. Okay, So now I think we're going to head down to level one, which houses the network labs and the games lab.

[00:03:42] This is one of the games labs here at BCU. This is more of a high spec facility to help with rendering animation and, you know, running the games that you create as a games development students as well as that. We've also got the different component parts. You need to build a project VR here so you can experiment with VR within the game called events such as Games Jam where students from across Birmingham City University come together to create a game within 24 hours or 48 hours and present it to a panel.

[00:04:14] So this is one of our networking labs here at BCU. It is a Cisco networking lab. All the hardware in here is industry standard and the majority of it is Cisco related. This entire room and several other rooms on this floor are complete separate LAN network from the rest of university. And you can, you know, run tests and simulations and try and configure and connect to of computers within the labs. The software that we use here is called Cisco Packet Tracer or Nethercutt. This is what we use to prototype our networks. And then you can actually physically build them using the hardware in the room to see how it works in practice.

[00:04:55] So this is one of our many computing labs here at Birmingham City University at the College of Computing. We have about 20 computing labs here at the University of all kinds of different software. And then depending on the course that you're doing, we have experts here from industry working as lecturers to have that real world experience and incredibly helpful with helping you to complete your coursework as well as get any additional advice and sort of guide you in the right direction.

[00:05:22] This is one of the big open communal spaces where you can come and catch up on work, but New Macs here that you can work on as well as Windows PCs out at the back can also see that there's more lab space here. So if you want to use a laptop, you can get those as well. Along with that, there's also the main I.T help desk here where you can come in and ask questions if you've got any issues.

[00:05:43] That was just a taste of computing at BCU. If you'd like to experience it yourself, come along to one of our Open Days or applicant taster days in the future. As well as if you'd like to know more about the computing experience. You can watch this video right here.

[00:06:03] You still here? Go watch the video.

Our Facilities

We are constantly investing in our estate and are currently in the process of spending £260 million on new learning facilities. This course will be taught at Millennium Point at the City Centre Campus.

The course is supported with a wide range of cutting-edge facilities in the City Centre Campus. We have a state-of-the-art computer games technology lab which contains high-performance PCs, Sony PlayStation development kits and a range of industry standard software including Unity, Unreal and a suite of professional Microsoft development tools.

We also have many open access areas where students can study together and even hire out laptops for use in these spaces and others within the university.

Within the University there are many internationally recognised research teams giving you the opportunity to collaborate with them on exciting interdisciplinary projects.

Computer networking

The laboratories are well-equipped for all our computer networking courses, as well as specialist areas for practical work such as voice-over internet protocol (VoIP), forensic and ethical hacking technologies, wireless and mobile technologies and radio frequency identification technologies to name but a few.

Software development and computer programming

There are a number of open access, software development and computer programming laboratories that can be used to develop systems and programmes, including database management systems such as MySQL, to name but a few.

Systems laboratories

Our embedded systems laboratories are used to develop real-time systems, such as specialist hardware training and development resources, and industrial-standard software development and simulation tools. These include microcontroller software and robotics design and development, to name but a few.

Electronic systems

To underpin the basic principles of electronic systems, we have a well-equipped laboratory of general and specialist test and measurement kits, including powered prototyping development boards, dual power supplies, frequency generators and counters and digital multi-meters to name but a few.

Forensic computing

Our successful development of forensic computing has led to a specialist forensics laboratory that is fully equipped with essential hardware and software for this sensitive area of study. The laboratory includes high-spec PCs with built-in multi interface Tableau write blockers, EnCase and FTK computer forensic software and steganography detection and analysis software, to name but a few.

More on our facilities

Our staff

Kira Summers

Programme Leader, Lecturer

Akira Summers has been working in software and technological development since the year 2000. Starting off in web development and interactive media, she has held many development roles and spent several years working as an embedded game programmer, multimedia developer and learning technologist. 

More about Kira

Dr Tychonas Michailidis

Course Leader - MSc User Experience Design

Dr Tychonas Michailidis is Course Leader for MSc User Experience Design. He is part of BIFCA, teaching both students in Birmingham and in Wuhan, China. He joined BCU in February 2020 from Solent University in Southampton.

More about Tychonas