Teaching and assessment
You’ll study and learn with academics who are active researchers, experts in their field and have a passion for their subjects. Our approach to teaching will provide you with the knowledge, opportunities, and support you need to grow and succeed in a global workplace. Find out more about our approach to teaching and learning.
Teaching format
A typical week will involve about 10-15 hours of scheduled teaching time. Our courses are based on a series of lectures with associated laboratory sessions, programming classes and tutorials.
Throughout the course, you will have a personal supervisor responsible for guiding your studies. In addition to any timetabled sessions, you will meet with your supervisor regularly, and you can also go to them at any time should you have any issues, academic or personal. There are problem classes to help you put learning from lectures into practice and regular project supervision meetings for your individual project.
You will also undertake learning outside of the scheduled timetable. This can be through working in the labs, or through reading recommended materials or working through problems. Consequently, you'll need to be self-motivated, self-disciplined and willing to learn outside regular classes.
As you progress through the course you will develop your skills to become a more independent learner. You'll also spend time working on your individual research project later on in the course, in addition to timetabled activity.
In the UK, full-time students are expected to spend 1,200 hours a year learning. That's about 40 hours of classes and independent study each week during semesters. Everyone learns at a different rate, so the number of hours you spend on independent study will be different to other students on your course.
Facilities
Built to the highest specifications, our modern, self-contained building is packed with cutting-edge facilities.
We have four software and two hardware laboratories with professional grade facilities that you'll use throughout your studies, depending on the modules you choose.
Our study and social pod is open 24/7 for group and individual study and events. It can be booked for student society meetings and for events.
Our building also contains a range of hi-spec labs that are used by our research teams. Depending on your interests, in the later stages of your degree you may get first hand exposure to these environments.
Our Interaction Labs provide excellent facilities for research and teaching in human-computer interaction. The Interaction Labs consist of an Accessibility and Usability Lab and a Games Research Lab, both of which are stocked with the latest technologies.
Our Real Time Systems Lab is the main research and development facility for the Real Time Systems research group. Inside the laboratory is a range of high-performance computers, custom hardware like FPGAs, robots, and various industrial machinery.
The Computer Vision group have a darkroom laboratory which enables us to conduct experiments in controlled illumination conditions and a second laboratory which includes a commercial 3D scanner.
Located close to the Department is our Robotics Laboratory - a purpose-built laboratory used for various robotics research projects and teaching. Within it, there is a dedicated student working area, with workstations and electronics bench equipment, alongside the main 80m2 robotics arena. There is also a workshop area with CAD, soldering and 3D printing facilities.
Find out more about our facilities, including a video tour showing our labs, teaching and research spaces.
Teaching location
The Department of Computer Science is based on Campus East. The majority of your teaching will take place in the department, with additional teaching taking place at other locations on Campus East.
About our campus
Our beautiful green campus offers a student-friendly setting in which to live and study, within easy reach of the action in the city centre. It's easy to get around - everything is within walking or pedalling distance, or you can use the fast and frequent bus service. Take a campus tour.
Assessment and feedback
We use a variety of assessment techniques throughout your course. This allows you to practice different techniques, from report writing, presentations and live demos to timed programming assessments and closed exams. It also means that you are not disadvantaged by being assessed in any one way.
To aid your learning we provide feedback on your assessments in addition to the marks you receive. Our Departmental Examinations Team is also available should you have any assessment queries.
We also ask our students for feedback on the course at the end of each year. This helps to improve and modify what we do to help meet the needs of our students.
