Five years ago, I was reading a lot of articles in the newspapers to gain some insight into how life and education would be in the United Kingdom? I am currently in the U.K. and I work as the Course Administrator in the same University where I completed my MBA.
Here, I share the insights I have gained on the educational system in the U.K. — teaching style, course structure and what is expected from a student.
Course structure
Every course or programme of study, whether it is undergraduation or postgraduation, is based on credits. Each subject (modules) under a given course has certain number of credits. For example, if you wish to complete master’s in human resource management, you will have to secure 360 credits or so. A final project might have 70 credits; other modules may have 30 credits and so on. Most courses will have a combination of exams, assignments, presentation and final projects as a part of your assessment. But some specialised courses like nursing, science, sports therapy and media production would have labs, placements, external visits and practicals included in assessment.
Different approach
Every module will have a list of ‘learning outcomes’, which refers to what a learner has to achieve as a part of completing a programme of study. Credits are assigned to each module based on the level of learning a student will achieve after passing it.
Some of you might assume that the teaching style in India and U.K. are similar, but there is a huge difference. Your study time will vary from time in class to time in the library and with your peer group. Surprisingly, you will spend 70 per cent of your time in library, 20 per cent with your peer group and only 10 per cent in a classroom.
In each lecture, your tutor will give you a brief introduction to the topic highlighting all the key areas, and you are expected to read about it in detail after your class. You will read from various academic online journals or books available in the digital format and books in the campus library. You will be given a list of authors and journals related to your topic of study. The wider you read, the better you score. Most universities will have a student’s portal where you can access your course and module information, important notices from your tutors and the discussion board where you can have discussions related to your study with other students; however, the layout might vary from university to university.
Plagiarism
Here I must highlight how assignments work. As I mentioned earlier, most of the courses will have many assignments as part of your assessment. The fun part about an assignment is that you write it at home. You will be given sufficient time to complete it, provided you start reading and writing on time. You are free to read from any book or journal provided it comes up to academic standards. You can discuss with friends or your tutor and get some ideas. If you look at it that way it is certainly simple.
The hard part is to avoid plagiarism. This is where you might get into trouble. During most of our learning experience in India we were expected to produce exactly what was written in your books. Unlike this, while writing your assignment you will be expected to produced evidence of literature as well as critically analyse each idea and come up with your own thoughts or theory about it.
For example, if you are expected to write about evolution, you first quote all the famous theories of famous authors (using Harvard referencing style) and then critically evaluate each theory and come up with your reflection of those theories. There is a limit on how many quotations you can use in your assignment which will vary with each university. Most universities will allow you a maximum of 25 per cent to 30 per cent. Copying your work — be it from a publication or from other students — is considered a serious academic offence.
Every university has strict academic offence policies and procedures to deal with such cases. All your submissions will go through software which is very effective in detecting such offences with evidence. You will have to submit your assignments within a deadline and within a prescribed word count. Exceeding word count means, anything you write in excess will not be taken as part of your submission. You could give 10 per cent more or less at the most.
I left for the U.K. after completing my MSW – HR (master’s in social work) and with three years of experience working in various leading software companies as a HR professional, yetI failed in my first assignment as I was not clear about writing it.
So stay focused on your studies and remain on top of your course work and you will do well.
The writer works at the University of Bedfordshire and can be contacted at dishonisraelhr@gmail.com
