Module Directory

This module offers final year students a unique opportunity to work together in an interdisciplinary team researching, developing/ and implementing a real-world project for a local partner organisation.

This module enables you to use the knowledge and skills you have acquired during your degree to address a real-world challenge, while sharing and developing your creative, organisational and practical abilities. By doing so, it will prepare you for entering the graduate labour market or going on to post-graduate study.

The aims of this module are:

• To provide students from different inter-/disciplinary backgrounds the opportunity to work collaboratively on a real-world project.


• To introduce students to the challenges and satisfactions of community engagement and group project work.


• To encourage students to experiment with peer-to-peer and experiential learning.


• To enable students to enhance their professional, transferable and employability skills.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Have a good understanding of how to develop a project remit in a creative, coherent way and deliver a group project on time to partners.


2. Gain knowledge of the challenges involved in working in an interdisciplinary team and of effective ways of organising collaborative group work.


3. Develop enhanced professional skills, including the ability to work to a tight schedule, reach agreements, and manage client expectations.


4. Develop enhanced research, presentation and writing skills.

There will be four projects and places may be restricted, therefore there is an application and selection process at the start of the academic year. All students who wish to enrol on this module must read the project descriptions (remits) posted on the CS300 Moodle in late September. You must then send your CV and application letter to the Module Co-ordinator.

The letter should explain why you would like to enrol on this module, your preferred project, and what skills and experience you would bring to the group. You will then have an interview with the Module Co-ordinator in the first two weeks of the Autumn term. After the interviews, we will select the groups and inform you whether you have secured a place and on which project. If the module is over-subscribed, unsuccessful candidates will be contacted in time to enrol on an alternative Spring module. We will be looking to form project groups with a balance of aptitudes, skills, experience and potential, so lack of experience is not an obstacle.

Please note: Attendance and participation are very important on this module, so before you enrol, think carefully about whether you are prepared to make the commitment that it will involve. Students on this module are expected to conform to high standards of professionalism and ethical behaviour. To ensure this, there are a number of safeguards in place. First, all students working with outside partners will be required to read and sign a project partnership agreement. Second, some projects, (e.g. those involving minors and vulnerable people), will require students to have a DBS clearance before they engage with the target group. Third, groups carrying out primary research or data-collection that involves human participants (e.g. surveys, interviews, focus groups) are required to follow University research ethics procedures.

Partners might include a local charity, social enterprise, community or public or private sector organisation, or the University's Sustainability section.

There will be at least one sustainability project each year. Other projects might involve anything from carrying out a piece of research, or designing a public information campaign, to organising part of an exhibition or implementing a community initiative.

This is a non-standard module, which combines a range of collaborative, peer-to-peer and experiential teaching and learning methods. You will be required to do some preliminary reading on the theory and practice of community engagement, group and interdisciplinary work, and project development for the first three sessions of the module. But after that, your team will need to identify relevant bibliography and do some reading related to the topic of your project.

At the beginning of this module you will receive training in approaches and challenges of community engagement working, including the use of face-to-face meetings and ethics. Then, each group will start work developing the preliminary project remit. Your group will present your project proposal to the module supervisor and a representative from your partner organisation and make revisions according to their feedback.

Once your group’s project plan has been approved, you will spend the rest of the module working with your team implementing and completing the project. While groups are encouraged to work autonomously (combining face-to-face and online meetings), you will also receive regular supervision and support from the module co-ordinator and/or the partner representative.

Students will be provided with guidance on the module assignments and assessments in the Module Handbook.