The following is an outline for my MTA Portfolio that I included in the Vision Document for the Breaking Cinema podcast project.
I included an outline of my MTA Portfolio because Breaking Cinema was very much tied up with my postgraduate studies.
Additionally, by this time, I had also decided that Breaking Cinema was going to be one of the final projects for my MTA.
I wrote this outline towards the end of 2015/beginning of 2016 and it greatly expands on the self-declaration outline I authored on 10/02/2016.
How does Breaking Cinema play into and draw from my self-constructed Masters portfolio a.k.a. my postgraduate 2.0 studies?
“It’s clear that the economic downturn has bred a whole generation of “just-try-to-stop-me” kids, determined to get the knowledge they need for success even if it comes from outside the traditional educational framework.”
– John Fawcett, Hacking Your Education: The Next Generation of Students
My
Masters of Transdisciplinary Application
in
Global Citizenship,
Mass Communications
and Business Administration
or MTA
is a self-directed course of personal and professional development which is modelled after a traditional Masters course of study.
I have primarily constructed my MTA from 117 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), with a further 70 or so left to choose from, as offered by a wide-range of international institutions and which I have been studying since September, 2013.
Additionally, my MTA is also being made up of various other educational resources, work placements and creative portfolio elements.
In total, my MTA will be made up of…
- Three Majors
- 30 Concentration Clusters comprised of various educational resources, exams, pieces of coursework and somewhere between 100 and 200 MOOCs
- Work Placements
- Three Major Creative Application Projects
- A Final Summative Dissertation Project
And key among these elements is the Breaking Cinema project.
However, as already detailed in this document, the podcast and my MTA are very intimately related and I am now going to outline my MTA in order to thoroughly clarify that relationship.
Between September, 2013 and December, 2015 I always referred to my independent learning and research firstly as ‘my research’, then ‘my studies’, and then later on as ‘my Postgraduate 2.0 Studies’.
However, at the beginning of January, 2016 I signed up for a No-Pay MBA, which is a Masters of Business Administration education program built entirely out of entirely online and mostly free online resources. If I were to go to university to study an MBA it would set me back at least £15,000… hence the No-Pay MBA.
I signed up for the No-Pay MBA program after seeing the required course list and realising that I had already studied half the courses as part of my own studies and most of the remaining courses were already on my to-do list. I also signed up to the No-Pay MBA program because the requirements of the program are forcing me to get my head around the financing and accounting aspects of business, which is a huge headache, but is necessary none-the-less.
However, signing up to the No-pay MBA program has in turn caused me to reconfigure the entire focus of my postgraduate 2.0 studies and sharpen it up into…
… a full-fledged Masters course of study.
Just without the accreditation, because it is not being issued by a University body.
However, the only guaranteed thing a university’s awarded credit seems to bring a student is a great deal of financial debt, so I can’t say that I feel as though I am missing out!I have called it an MTA a.k.a. a Masters of Transdisciplinary Application, because I wanted a name that was absolutely concise.
Opposed to its previous iteration as…
My transdisciplinary postgraduate 2.0 studies in Entrepreneurship – Digital Marketing & Brand Building – Emerging Technologies – Psychology – Neuroscience – Media Theory & Practice – Personal Development – Logical & Critical Thinking – Research Methods – Storytelling – Creative Problem-Solving & Innovation – Web Science – Holistic Wellbeing & Biohacking – Management & Leadership – Transmedia – Progressive Education & Digital Learning – Finance & Accounting – Copywriting – Digital Arts – Communication Science – Economics – Negotiation & Conflict Resolution – Independent Filmmaking and Global Citizenship
It is Transdisciplinary, because that has been the nature of all my independent studying, i.e. not adhering to one specific discipline, but rather rising above them and mixing and matching areas of knowledge as I see fit. The whole point is to move away from the one-track-career-and-life mentality which is proving to be completely ineffectual in the 21st century and will increasingly become so as the century progresses.
“Transdisciplinarity is defined by Basarab Nicolescu through three methodological postulates: the existence of levels of Reality, the logic of the included middle, and complexity. In the presence of several levels of Reality the space between disciplines and beyond disciplines is full of information. Disciplinary research concerns, at most, one and the same level of Reality; moreover, in most cases, it only concerns fragments of one level of Reality. On the contrary, transdisciplinarity concerns the dynamics engendered by the action of several levels of Reality at once. The discovery of these dynamics necessarily passes through disciplinary knowledge. While not a new discipline or a new superdiscipline, transdisciplinarity is nourished by disciplinary research; in turn, disciplinary research is clarified by transdisciplinary knowledge in a new, fertile way. In this sense, disciplinary and transdisciplinary research are not antagonistic but complementary. As in the case of disciplinarity, transdisciplinary research is not antagonistic but complementary to multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity research.”
And its Application, because it’s not a passive course of study, the point is to proactively apply this knowledge… in a transdisciplinary fashion.
My MTA has three Majors.
A major is the focus of your degree, so mine has three degree majors that I have rolled into one (again transdisciplinary) and those Majors are…
- Major 1: Global Citizenship – A range of knowledge and competencies that enables you to be a proactive world citizen in the 21st century global community.
- Major 2: Mass Communications – An extension of what I started in my BA (Hons), but opposed to just focusing on film, this one focus more broadly on the whole media field.
- Major 3: Business Administration (No-Pay MBA) – An expansion of my entrepreneurship studies, with entrepreneurship being the main focus of this Major… employing mass communications as a proactive world citizen in a transdisciplinary style.
All three Majors are drawn from study materials and MOOCs that are arranged into 30 concentration clusters (or modules).
MTA Concentration Clusters…
- Entrepreneurship – starting and running a business, ABSOLUTELY essential knowledge for the 21st century career environment!
- Marketing &Branding – generating ongoing relationships and capital for a succinctly recognisable venture.
- Emerging Technologies – forward-thinking in regards to widely used technologies that are just around the corner and offer many opportunities for wide-ranging innovation and business creation.
- Logical &Critical Thinking – bullshit detection and how to dispose of it; also very useful for effective decision-making.
- Film Studies 2.0 – Constructive Film Studies.
- Emotional &Social Intelligence – recognising and regulating one’s emotions in order to effectively guide one’s thinking and behaviour & recognising other people’s emotions and appropriately regulating one’s emotions in order to effectively and fairly guide thinking and behaviour of yourself and other people.
- Scientific Research Methods – reality and how to go about revealing its intricate workings.
- Finance& Accounting – Finance: the usage of money & Accounting: the tracking of money; they’re actually not the same thing, but they are still a massive headache.
- Creative & Flexible Thinking – thinking outside of the box for creative problem-solving, innovation, ideation and general life improvement and satisfaction.
- Global Affairs &International Business – global politics and business.
- Progressive Education &Digital Learning – education for producing proactive individuals, not passive factory drones & utilising digital technology to help achieve this, millenials rejoice!
- Biohacking – health, fitness, nutrition and all-round wellbeing for peak-performance a.k.a. do-it-yourself biology and life improvement.
- Cultural Intelligence &Multilingualism – Cultural Intelligence: Emotional and Social Intelligence positively applied across cultures that possess different or contradictory customs & Multilingualism: the ability to speak multiple languages, I’ve been laying the theoretical foundation for this.
- Storytelling &Play – Stories: how humans make sense of the world & Play: how humans interact with the world – this knowledge is applicable to human beings of all ages and in any situation of human life.
- Media Studies 2.0 – Constructive Media Studies.
- Negotiation &Conflict Resolution – Negotiation: how to achieve mutually agreeable and productive results & Conflict Resolution: more Emotional and Social Intelligence combined with Negotiation skills.
- Independent Filmmaking – in particular, this one deals with the legal and financial aspects.
- Reading, Writing & Arithmetic – gaps in my formal education need plugging and my arithmetic has always needed work!
- Psychology – the study of the mind and behaviour, always been interested in this.
- Neuroscience – the study of the operations of the human nervous system and brain a.k.a. physically how the body and brain as one information processing machine can do what they do.
- Digital & Desktop Literacy – This one is a loose fusion of Computer Science, Digital Etiquette, Software Application and Content Creation skills. Basically, it shows that I can use a range of software and handle myself in the digital arena.
- Political Thought& Intellectual History – political, moral and philosophical history.
- Web Science – Web Science is to the world wide web what Film Studies is to cinema.
- Ethical &Sustainable Practice – human rights and environmental concerns for fair and logical application.
- Leadership & Management – leaders inspire and direct the overall direction, whereas managers handle and implement the nitty-gritty, these are skills that are applicable even outside of a business setting.
- Project Management – very dull and tedious, but a necessary skill-and-knowledge set for bringing a project to a successful conclusion.
- Economics – describes and examines the factors that determine the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, its not just about money.
- Constructive Journalism – positive news reporting for cultural improvement, not for making people feel depressed and hopeless about the world, Film Studies 2.0 and Media Studies 2.0 take a great deal from this one.
- Digital Arts – art as produced and reproduced within the digital medium, as with all art this is one is hugely subjective and applicable to many different subjects, but as with all art, it greatly assists in stimulating news ways of thinking.
- Big History – World History is a whistle-stop global tour from the dawn of man right up to the present day; whereas Big History supplements this knowledge with data from other disciplines, such as Archaeology, Cosmology and Quantum Physics, etc., in order to present a view of human and natural history that dates all the way back to the big bang, while speculating on future human history… hence Big History.
As with the holistic nature of a transdisciplinary approach, most of the clusters are applicable within each Major, the point of my MTA is to build an aptitude whereby I could apply Global Citizenship, Mass Communications and Business Administration all in accordance with one-another… and beyond one-another.
Pretty much all of the courses that make up the clusters have graded exams and some also have coursework elements, so in-and-off themselves, the courses of the thirty clusters will add up to a portfolio of demonstrable competencies.
Some of these courses are issued with free Completion Certificates, but most require a payment in order to unlock the certificates. I will not be buying a completion for every course, as it would cost too much, but I have been and will continue to purchase purchasing certificates for key courses that highlight specific points and aptitudes of the 30 Concentration Clusters.
MTA Work Placements…
I am also planning on doing some work placements as part of my MTA, what they are and how many of them there will be is yet to be determined. All I know is that they have to supply experience that satisfies the three Majors, so that could be a work placement for each or a combination. However, Bristol being an international city is very useful for this sort of thing, but for the time being I am more focused on studying enough courses to satisfy the focuses of the 30 Concentration Clusters. However, with 117 done, it is definitely getting there, so (either paid or voluntary) I will certainly be starting these work placements this year.
MTA Major Creative Application Projects…
There will be three primary creative application projects to round off each Major and these projects are…
- Global Citizenship – PeterO’Brien.me – my personal website and the entirety of my online identity and everything that I am doing with it, i.e. proactive education, networking, entrepreneurship, etc.
- Mass Communications – The Breaking Cinema Podcast – There are many incentives for doing this project – as detailed in this document, but the primary one is to build an online entity that is independent to PeterO’Brien.me, but also builds on it in order to really exercise my digital product creation and marketing skills – one of the MOST important competencies to possess, if not THE most important!
- Business Administration – Business Plan Portfolio – this is something that I have already initiated in my entrepreneurship studies and the point of doing it is to demonstrate an understanding of what is required in starting up and then running a successful business by thoroughly researching it and detailing its every operation and requirement in a Business Plan Portfolio (writing the overview document for Breaking Cinema has been something of a practice run for this), which you can then put into action.
MTA Final Summative Dissertation Project(s)…
Finally, to round off my MTA as a whole, there will be a final summative project that may be a dissertation paper or a dissertation film, or both.
I must admit, I am quite keen on a dissertation documentary film because I bemoaned the fact of not being about to submit a film as my BA (Hons) theoretical dissertation, but also practically because I have already laid the groundwork for it in other film projects I have initiated around my MTA.
These projects being…
- The Miracle of Crowdfunding – the factual/fictional film that developed out of my aborted tuition fee crowdfunding campaign for the traditional Masters I was originally going to pursue. While we did not shoot all the footage for this, there is still plenty waiting to be used.
- Inside the Box, Outside the Box: Being a Postgraduate 2.0 k.a. MOOCer– This is a short reflexive film which we have already hsot some footage for that briefly outlines my incetives and realities of being a independent postgraduate learner building and studying his own Masters course.
- Breaking Blindness: The Breaking Cinema Vision Video of Lateral Thinking – An unfinished feature-length self-reflexive video essay assembled in order to help me figure out the focus of the Breaking Cinema podcast. This video essay is detailed at great length in this document and the content of it is very applicable to my MTA.
- Breaking Cinema with a Selfie Stick – Another self-reflexive video for the Breaking Cinema project which contains many points that are applicable to my MTA.
- 365 FRAMES 2015 – My video a day project for 2015 which has plenty of footage that I can use to tell the story of the making and studying of my MTA.
And I can always shoot more material.
But we will wait-and-see, this is not currently the priority.
MTA Graduation…
When (and if) I ever finish all of this, the entirety of the portfolio of transdisciplinary learning and application this Masters is producing will be fully hosted and accessible via PeterOBrien.me, as one giant personal and transparent portfolio.
Additionally, because I will not be getting a graduation diploma for this MTA, I am going to outsource a commission for an infographic that will concisely and visually sum up the entirety of my MTA. This MTA infographic can serve as the graduate diploma.
Ultimately, if you want something done right, build It yourself, because you have to create your own opportunities… regardless of how long it takes.
Breaking Cinema with my MTA
“Then said the shepherd boy, in lower Pomerania is the diamond mountain, which is two miles high, two miles wide, and two miles deep. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.”
– The Shepard Boy, The Grimm brother
One of the reasons, it has taken me so long to decide and define the focus of the Breaking Cinema project is precisely because its development has been tangled up with the concerns of my MTA and what I have been trying to figure out via its studies.
By presenting an overview of my MTA, I have attempted to show you how my MTA relates to the Breaking Cinema project.
They are similar.
They are related.
But they are also distinct.
My MTA is more focused on my aspirations of entrepreneurial practice in a global community.
Breaking Cinema is a subset of my MTA aspirations and is more concerned with my desire to expand people’s minds using film and media as a whole as a starting point and frame of reference.
Ultimately, what should now be clear is that the focuses of my MTA are going to have an inherent influence in development and direction the Breaking Cinema project, and vice versa.