Why did you choose to study at Deakin?
Kaylah: I enjoyed that the courses offered ranged from specialised to quite broad. For me studying a course that covers both design and animation basics allows me to choose from a broader range of entry level positions and gives me a base in multiple areas from which I can choose to specialise in later.
What were you hoping to achieve in applying to study this course?
Kaylah: I wanted to follow my passion, which is in its broadest sense, art. I knew that although I probably would’ve enjoyed a career in my previous field of study, I wasn’t truly passionate about it, and that my best work would always be where I was free to be creative and share those projects with others. I trusted Deakin as an institution and I hoped that my chosen course would allow me a broad base from which to begin my career in the field.
How is your course preparing you to be work ready when you graduate?
Kaylah: Not only are we learning how to use the industry standard tools we’ll need once we graduate, but the units offered include those which push you to build your professional portfolio, and the teachers are all industry professionals so that gives me confidence that the skills we are learning will be relevant to our careers. In the industry I’m aiming for, degrees aren’t necessary but your skills are, and I’m confident that the time and money I have invested in this course is going toward teaching me those necessary skills.
Tell us about your experience of Deakin’s teaching staff.
Kaylah: My teachers have all been incredibly supportive of my progress as a student. It’s important to note that I have a learning disability, meaning learning on my own without support is not impossible but incredibly slow and difficult, so I am glad that the institution I chose to study with has staff that do their best to teach us the skills we need, and to encourage us to pursue niches that we are invested in.
Tell us about where you’ve experienced practical or applied learning.
Kaylah: I’m currently enrolled in a unit where we are creating an ‘interactive animated experience’, which could be a game or a virtual tour or something else. We are lucky enough to have the opportunity to create this experience for VR, and to be able to have users interact with our creation through a headset. It’s incredible to know that at the beginning of this unit I barely knew how to import files into Unity (industry-standard software for a lot of indie game developers and the game production software we are using), but now I know how to create something that someone could theoretically play in their own home.
What’s one thing you’ve learnt or explored in your course that you didn’t expect?
Kaylah: It’s not that I didn’t expect to have a portfolio by the end of my course, but I was surprised that there was an entire unit dedicated for us to develop something for ourselves, as opposed to a generic product that could be easily marked by a rubric. By that I mean a lot of assignments, from as early as primary school, ask that you simply stick to the rubric. Yes, they teach you skills through the research for and creation of a submission, however they can be very one size fits all, and you’re expected to be able to adapt the skills to your own life on your own time. The fact that this unit focused on us students as individuals, aimed to flesh out our portfolios in a way that fit our niches, and gave us the opportunity to create an end product that was something personal and practical that we could bring into our professional lives after graduating was incredibly meaningful to me. It reassured me to know that when I complete my course I would have something more concrete to show for it than just a piece of paper with my qualification stamped on it.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of your course at Deakin?
Kaylah: I think the most rewarding aspect is simply that I have found a field of research that I am genuinely passionate about. I genuinely enjoy working on almost all of my assignments. And I know that my teachers encourage me and my classmates to embrace our creativity, and complete our assignments in ways that are interesting and fulfilling to us as individuals.
Kaylah Fidge is studying Deakin’s Bachelor of Design (3D Animation)* course.
*New course title Bachelor of Design course