Flexible Study: The Best of All Worlds
More than ever, postgraduate study today involves the need to balance competing commitments, such as employer deadlines and family life. We've developed flexible study to address your individual needs and our focus on professional education.
Many of our degrees offer Flexible Study: a blend of face-to-face teaching with high-quality e-learning support. This delivers many advantages:
- You have access to high quality teaching materials off-site and can ask tutors and fellow students questions without coming into the university
- You also have a choice of how to learn, to suit your preferred learning style
- Unforeseen commitments are less serious as you have the online materials to access at any time
Flexible study is available to both full and part-time students.
What commitments must I make?
Most modules can be studied remotely. Where some face-to-face contact is necessary, eg specialist laboratory sessions, additional evening sessions will be made available to help you fit attendance around your commitments.
How are modules delivered?
| Lectures | by online teaching materials, eg course notes, presentations |
| Tutorials | by a mixture of online, or occasional early evening classes where necessary at the University on the same day as the face-to-face teaching (view the face-to-face teaching timetables below ) |
| Assessments by exam (if required) | on site at the University. Timetables published well in advance. |
| Laboratory classes | online or occasional early evening at the University on the same day as the face-to-face teaching (view the timetables below) |
| Occasional off-site visits or fieldtrips (if required) | on advance notified dates |
Teaching is supported by the University's eLearning platform (CitySpace) through the provision of teaching materials, discussion boards, online literature, and links to electronic journals subscribed to by the University. These services are available both inside and outside the University through your University computer account.
How is the time allocated?
As with traditional face-to-face full and part-time, full-time students study four modules and part-time study two modules simultaneously in each of two study periods, before and after Christmas. For full-time, a maximum of 600 hours of study time are distributed over each period of 17 weeks, at a maximum of 35 hours per week, and for part-time a maximum of 300 hours of study time are distributed over each period of 17 weeks, at a max of 17.5 hours per week. Since actual study time varies to knowledge and experience, many students take less time than this. Non-lecture teaching (ie tutorials, assessments etc) makes up around half of the 'contact' time for each module. Students need to schedule one to one and a half hours per week, per module, for these activities.
Generally, flexible study will follow the same teaching pattern as full and part-time delivery (view the face-to-face teaching timetables below) with materials being made available online on a week to week basis. A small number of modules require attendance at lab classes or tutorials. These take place on the same evening as the associated lecture and are clearly indicated in the timetables below.
| Which degrees are available by flexible mode? | Timetables (full and part-time) for each degree |
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MSc Information Management MSc Information Systems MSc Information Systems & Technology MSc Geographic Information Management MSc Geographic Information Systems MSc Health Informatics |
MSc
Information Management MSc Information Systems MSc Information Systems & Technology MSc Geographic Information Management MSc Geographic Information Systems MSc Health Informatics |