Computing (Top-Up) BSc (Hons)

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.

This module gives you a deep understanding of the concepts, theories and foundations of Big Data, and provides you with the opportunity to develop the skills to manage massive and complex data sets – as well as to infer knowledge from data - using industry standard platforms and tools. Big data analytics is the use of advanced analytic techniques on very large, diverse data sets that might include structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, from different sources, and in different sizes from terabytes to zettabytes. The module therefore includes an introduction to the specific nature and requirements of Big Data analytics, and to emerging trends and use cases where Big Data outperforms traditional data warehouse approaches. It will include an understanding – and practical use of- contemporary open-source tools such as R, Hadoop, HDFS, MapReduce, Yarn, Spark, Storm, and Hive. The module will also cover concepts of critical data studies and provide a forum for you to investigate the continuing ethical, sustainable, environmental and societal implications of Big Data. For example, sustainable practices in Big Data analysis pipeline optimization and incorporating energy-efficient design ideas. Ethical issues around how Big Data can be used will be explored.

This module you will provide foundational knowledge of Cloud Computing whilst also exposing you to more complex cloud services used throughout industry. Cloud Computing allows organisations across all sectors to leverage innovation and business advantage through subscription services. Through the cloud businesses can access key technologies such as file storage, networking, virtual servers and software deployment tools. You will learn the theoretical concepts of Cloud Computing and develop practical skills for using a wide range of services commonly used within industry. The skills you acquire in this module will be applicable to digital roles in all sectors including learning how to scope out a cloud solution, understanding how to manage budgets and resources, learning how to create a virtual server to specific client requirements, and learning a range of programming skills for building and configuring cloud environments. You will also develop skills in critically interpreting current practice, for non-technical colleagues. That is, you will be able to explain the implications of adapting new technologies in relation to their cost benefits to your future colleagues or employees. The assessment will involve designing, constructing, and provisioning an appropriate Cloud Computing resource for a given scenario.

Through a number of guest lectures given by experts working in cloud delivery roles you will have an opportunity to gain insights into the kind of core cloud skills employers require. You will also critically engage with research outputs as part of your research rich learning. The assessment is made of 3 components 1) Practical demonstration of configuring cloud services for a given scenario (60%); 2) A written report (max 2000 words) which demonstrates a critical reflection of your cloud solution (40%).

In this Module you will work in a small group of your peers to undertake a computing group project. Each Project will involve the specification, design, implementation, documentation and demonstration of a technical artefact, showing your ability to synthesise information, ideas and practices to provide a quality solution together with an evaluation of that solution. This module is intended to bring together many of the concepts and skills learned in other modules prior to this point in your studies.

Collaboration and teamwork, the capability to work with other people, from a range of cultures, to achieve common goals, for example through group work, group projects and group presentations is a key set of understanding and skills that are highly valued by employers. This Module seeks to equip you with these very skills as well as deepen an awareness/sensitivity to diversity in terms of people and cultures. Moreover, the Module will encourage networking with peers and horizon scanning to identify opportunities to advance digital capabilities and create computing solutions that seek to create a better society. In particular the module will revisit how computing products and services increasingly impact on sustainability issues.

This module is set in the context of today’s society and the organisations within. Social behaviour, often in the virtual environment, creates a range of ethical issues centering on information security and governance. In addition to exploring these social and ethical issues, legal and regulatory frameworks that have been developed in recent years to try to address these issues are examined. You will also learn about security in organisations and will be introduced to a range of common threats and countermeasures. Topics include basic definitions of terminology alongside practical and theoretical frameworks to help you identify key governance and security issues and explore potential preventative measures. You will be covering terms such as ‘governance’ and ‘security’, frameworks which include the information life cycle, regulations and guidelines relating to professional conduct, privacy and data protection,

This module will extend and enhance your current understanding of human-computer interaction and UX theory/practice in support of the user experience, by investigating how people experience ubiquitous computing technologies (e.g., smart devices and wearables), both individually and in groups across a variety of contexts and domains.

’Experimental Design of Interactive Applications’ will explore key aspects of interaction design, focusing on how we can effectively understand and improve user interaction in context. Real-world examples (e.g., sourced from industry/employers/research) will be used to illustrate the importance of adopting an iterative, user-centred approach to user journey mapping and interface development which supports equality, diversity, and inclusion.

A range of experimental design methods and UX practices will be covered (e.g., task-based usability tests, usability inspection methods, lab- and field-test planning and deployment), enhancing your knowledge and understanding of relevant theory and techniques whilst helping you to develop practical and transferable skills within the UX domain. Employers are looking for computing students who understand the importance of user experience and interaction design, can work as individuals or members of a team to analyse interaction design problems in context and, can apply effective experimental design and UX techniques in order to devise effective design solutions for the user experience.

This module will provide you with knowledge and understanding of traditional, as well as modern and advanced machine learning techniques, and theoretical foundations of the algorithms, and enable you to gain practical experiences for applying these techniques to solve problems in areas such as Natural Language Processing, Image Processing, Medical Diagnosis, Speech Recognition.

‘Machine Learning’ aims to improve your employability by enabling you to gain a broad range of skills including analytical, problem solving, creativity, conducting research by addressing legal, ethical, social issues properly.

In particular, you will cover topics such as:

• Supervised machine learning techniques and classifiers
• Unsupervised machine learning techniques, clustering
• Feature extraction (supervised and unsupervised)
• Ensemble models
• Modern and advanced models
• Application of machine learning techniques in e.g. Natural Language Processing (NLP), Image Processing, Medical Diagnosis
• Legal, ethical and social issues in your applications, and techniques for security.

This module will give you an essential foundation in contemporary software development methods. You will learn key principles in architecting and constructing interactive applications for web and mobile devices. You will apply these principles by building a system that incorporates a user interface, a database and system logic for creating, reading, updating and deleting data. You will also gain hands on experience with industry standard developer tools, including code editors, versioning systems, package managers and debugging tools. The module will include use of generative AI as a code assistant (e.g. for generating assets and designs, for debugging, and for optimization).


‘Contemporary Methods of Software Development’ will provide you with skills for developing interactive applications. By the end of the module you will have built an application that others will be able to download and use. The skills you learn will be valuable if you want to develop software for your dissertation project. Employers are looking for software developers with transferable skills and the ability to think critically.

This module is the first half of your major final year project module, during which you will undertake a substantial individual practical computing project related to your programme of study. You will become knowledgeable in your chosen topic, including important concepts and literature. You will use and further develop skills learnt elsewhere in your programme and acquire new skills and expertise to carry out practical computing work. You will also acquire or further develop your professional skills, including communication skills (oral presentation and report writing), literature searching and review, research methods and design, project management and personal time management. Both the technical and professional skills developed through the project module will enhance your career and employability competencies. During this module, you will create a project proposal for the practical project you will complete as part of the Computing Project: Practical module, which you will study in your second semester of the programme. This practical project will involve the creation of an artefact as the focus for covering all or part of an implementation lifecycle. In this module, you create a proposal for this project and explore the issues the practical project will address.  Projects based solely on literature review activity and/or user/market surveys are unacceptable, e.g., all will involve system/software development work. Hence, you will engage in research-informed authentic enquiry by exploring the context of a computing problem and planning how you can execute a related practical investigation in your second semester on the programme.

This module is the second half of your major final year project module, during which you will undertake a substantial individual practical computing project related to your programme of study. You will use and further develop skills learnt elsewhere in your programme and acquire new skills and expertise to carry out practical computing work. You will also acquire or further develop your professional skills, including communication skills (both oral presentation and report writing), project management and personal time management. Both the technical and professional skills developed through the project module will enhance your career and employability competencies. During this module, you will complete a practical computing project for which you developed a proposal in your first-semester project proposal module. This practical project will involve the creation of an artefact as the focus for covering all or part of an implementation lifecycle. In this module, you develop the system/software development artefacts you agreed in your project proposal. You will verify the artefacts developed. You will also critically evaluate the project, processes and technologies employed and your personal performance. Projects based solely on literature review activity and/or user/market surveys are unacceptable, e.g., all will involve system/software development work. Hence, you will engage in research-informed, authentic enquiry by delivering and evaluating a practical computing project.