indyld Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Anyone searching for HE production courses this year via UCAS search function will be surprised that there seems to be a lot fewer courses than perhaps you had initially thought. In the cases of some of the conservatoires, of course, they may not recruit via UCAS. But the new UCAS search tool appears to work differently to the old one and it might hiding production courses from you. While I can't claim to know exactly how the new search algo works, I have done a bit of testing and discovered a bias away from generalist courses towards specialist ones. Searching for 'Stage Management' last week only throws up courses with 'Stage Management' in the course title. Similarly with 'Lighting Design' and a load of similar related searches. Searching for 'technical theatre' only throws up courses with that in the title. Ah, at last 'theatre production' only returns courses with, yes you've guessed it, 'theatre production' in the title. At least we don't teach stage management or lighting design or prop making or.... hang on.... This issue has been reinforced by potential applicants that are saying that they are nearly missing production courses that aren't appearing in their UCAS search results due to this poor design. If you, or anyone you know, is searching for courses on UCAS you need to be aware of this pitfall. Search for every term, boys and girls. If you are running a course that isn't called Technical Theatre Production Stage Management Lighting Sound Scenic And Costume With Film and Television Arts, you should probably complain to UCAS and remind them of their responsibilities to enable students to look at all the options open to them in HE. (I'd be surprised if UCAS don't get an ear bashing about this, but let us just reflect that having a monopoly in search has the power to change product names and even the way everyone goes about their business. One day, "Google" will be the byword for the massive lesson we learned in the early 21st Century of influencing major markets.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
callumb Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 The courses may be on here: http://www.cukas.ac.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indyld Posted October 19, 2013 Author Share Posted October 19, 2013 The non-conservatoire courses are on the main search at UCAS, they just don't appear if you use a search term that isn't in the course title. They did last year before the revamp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indyld Posted November 5, 2013 Author Share Posted November 5, 2013 Follow up on this is that the UCAS search function has been updated again in order to return a broader range of results based on wider relevance of course content, not just the programme title. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.