This course is taught by friendly and experienced tutors including subject-specialist academic staff, study skills tutors, library and IT specialists, ensuring that you develop the key skills needed for HE. Within your first week, you will be assigned a personal tutor who will nurture you, provide feedback and develop your academic skills throughout the programme.
The course leader for the Step Up to HE programme will be your main personal contact throughout, helping you find your feet and offering guidance, advice and tuition on your learning development and possible future study routes that may be open to you.
This course consists of two separate modules which are designed to introduce you to a variety of skills and provide a firm academic foundation to build on.
Module 1: Skills Know-How: Review and Development
This introductory module will help you as a learner to reflect on your existing life, work and pre-existing learning experiences to date, enabling you to develop a firm sense of self-belief to support your transition to further study. This module will get you to grips with key Higher Education topics such as reflective practice and applicable learning theories. Coupled with this to further supplement your learning development as a student, you will also be gently introduced to the processes of carrying out research, reading and referencing at a University level. The overarching ethos of this introductory module is to help you understand yourself more as a learner, while allowing you to aptly apply various theoretical concepts to your own personal and professional practice. At its heart, this module will enable you to see the links to your own past experiences in relation to learning, alongside realising the importance your past experiences play in facilitating your future success at University. In terms of assessment, you will be supported in writing a 1,500-word self-reflective assessment which will hone your writing skills ready for University-level study. You will also be supported and guided on the effective use of IT in a digitally focused Higher Education environment.
Module 2: Research and Evaluation
Within this concluding module, you will build upon and hone the skills you have gained and developed within Module 1 in a subject area of your choice. You will get the chance to choose one of the subjects taught at degree level at our London campus and explore the discipline in order to help you decide what to pursue as an undergraduate. The areas for specialism are: Computer Science, AI, Cyber Security, Concept Art, esports or Games. As part of this module you will get the chance to meet some of the academics who deliver the content and will have specific lecturers tailored to your choice. You will also be introduced to the digital library team who will show you how to use the resources to research your chosen subject area, giving you some insight into what will be expected of you as an undergraduate.
Through a mixture of lectures, seminars and workshops we will demonstrate the skills needed to think critically and by the end of the module you will feel confident in your approach to enquiry and feel comfortable with a range of complex theoretical areas. We will teach you how to use data to support an argument, how to cite academic sources, how to research effectively, how to be objective and how to present this information visually to a target audience. You will learn how to respond to an essay question via an animated Power Point presentation. You will learn about the importance of design, the use of colour and the concepts of page hierarchy in being able to deliver a clear message.
Our London campus caters for professional level digital skills so you will be working on high spec computers, and as a student on our Step Up to HE programme, you will have access to all our facilities and equipment housed in our games labs, in our esports arena, in our art studio, and in our data junction.
You will be assessed in three areas: a 10-minute presentation, a 10-minute verbal reflection and a 500-word diary of learning. The diary will be a record of your learning and will be used to identify areas for further development, improvement and areas which you have excelled in over the duration of your studies, all of which should help you in your decision about applying to join us as an undergraduate in September.
Throughout the programme, students will be able to attend timetabled assignment support sessions. There you will get one-to-one support, feedback opportunities with experienced course tutors; these sessions will improve and develop your academic skillset and confidence to succeed within a Higher Education setting.
Academic year
We have course intakes taking place on the following dates:
- Monday 9 May 2022 – Tuesday 19 July 2022
Attendance is required on a Monday and Tuesday, 10am-2pm.