THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2026/2027

Draft Edition - Due to be published Thursday 9th April 2026

Timetable information in the Course Catalogue may be subject to change.

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh Futures Institute : Edinburgh Futures Institute

Postgraduate Course: The World of Story: Narrative, Creativity and the Arts (Online) (EFIE11513)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh Futures Institute CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)
Course typeOnline Distance Learning AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
Summary*Programme Core Course: Narrative Futures: Art, Data, Society (MSc)*

Please Note:
This course is only available to students enrolled on the Narrative Futures: Art, Data, Society (MSc) degree programme.

What kinds of new worlds do stories create? How do different narrative forms tell stories? What is the future of stories in our rapidly changing world? In 'The World of Story' course, students will learn about principles of narrative construction and interpretation in a variety of media and apply those critical and practical principles to the creation of their own narrative artefact. They will come away with an enhanced insight into the prospects of storytelling as a creative activity in the twenty-first century.
Course description The Semester 1 'The World of Story' programme core course will ask students to think about the future of the narrative arts. What do traditional and digital kinds of narrative have to say to each other? What does the future hold for textual, visual, performative and interactive modes of storytelling? How can one envision storytelling as a local, situated practice in a globalised and virtualised world? And how might human producers and consumers of stories make use of new and emerging technologies to tell stories of the present and the future?

Intensive teaching block periods will be team-taught by an interdisciplinary group of instructors and will include seminars, guest speakers, and interactive collaborative activities. Students will get the opportunity to bond as a cohort, but also to work in smaller groups and individually.

Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Hybrid Course Delivery Information:

The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed (see the Lecture Recording and Virtual Classroom policies for more details). There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.

You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, physical keyboard, and internet access.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  0
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 1, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 17, Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) The course will be assessed by means of the following assessment components:

1) Group Project Creative Artefact (20%)

2) 2000 Word Individual Essay (80%)
Feedback Feedback on any formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.

Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.

Feedback on the summative assessment(s) will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Formative Feedback Opportunity:

Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.

Working in small groups, students will create a story reflecting on the future of a chosen narrative form and present it to the class.

Students will make the story collaboratively using any combination of the artforms covered in the course.

There is no stipulated length and experimentation (using the skill-sets existing in the group) is encouraged.

Following formative feedback on the presentation and creative work from the class and the instructor, a final version of the creative work will be submitted alongside the individual essay as part of the summative assessment.

The Course Organiser will provide oral feedback immediately following the group presentations.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Demonstrate competence in core skills including independent research, planning and writing, group collaboration and oral presentation.
  2. Show knowledge of the theory and practice of story creation in different narrative media, such as textual (including machine-generated using text datasets), visual, performative, interactive (games).
  3. Apply existing and acquired skills to produce a narrative art-object in a selected medium
  4. Critically analyse and put into dialogue secondary academic texts from different disciplines dealing with the topic of narrative and the arts.
Reading List
The list of required class readings will be provided by the team-teaching instructors and may change year-to-year in accordance with staffing. All mandatory readings will be made available digitally.

Students will have access to a General Bibliography, incorporating both theoretical and skills/methods sources, covering a range of fields.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsStory,Narrative,Art,Creative,Text,Image,Film,Oral,Game,Technology
Contacts
Course organiserDr Lynda Clark
Tel:
Email: lynda.clark@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Zoe Hogg
Tel:
Email: Zoe.Hogg@ed.ac.uk
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