Master of Science in Physician Associate Studies

at University of Bolton United Kingdom

There are over 2250 active games companies in the UK, with over 95 in the Manchester area alone*. Our Games Art degree was designed after consultation with industry experts from a number of these companies and aims to prepare you for a career creating interactive worlds and charismatic characters for the games industry.

Taking an intensely practical approach that is designed to mimic the working environment found in the games industry, we’ll work to develop your understanding of the creative and technical possibilities of games art. Our studio-based course will guide you from the basics of digital art, through character and environment modelling, texturing, lighting, level design and concept art, to the latest technologies in traditional and handheld game art.

We share your passion for games and offer a supportive atmosphere where you can show your work and respond to critiques, which may come from staff, your peers or guest experts from industry. These sessions help you learn to develop your ideas and improve your presentation and communication skills ready for a career in this ever-growing industry.

*Ukie, June 2018, UK Games Map - http://ukie.org.uk/research/ accessed on 22 August 2019

Highlights

• Interdisciplinary projects with students from our other games courses give you opportunities to learn the vocabulary, production pipelines and work cultures of these disciplines along with valuable team working skills.
• We collaborate with games development companies on games usability testing, and offer you the opportunity to test these upcoming games before they go to market. Previous students have even had their names mentioned in the game credits.
• Our dedicated games labs feature high-specification hardware and industry-standard software, including Wacom Cintiq drawing screens, Pixologic Zbrush, Autodesk Maya, and Substance Painter/Designer.
• Our Game Jams are great opportunities to build your social network and practice your team working, problem solving and project management skills.
• In our portfolio modules, you can focus your project on the area of games art in which you wish to specialise, giving you the chance to create a large portfolio piece for your showreel.
• During your final year, you’ll work with students from our other games courses to produce a complete game demo that will be available for industry employers to view at the end-of-year degree show.

Key Features

• University of Bolton games graduates have been enjoying careers in the games industry for longer than most – we were one of the first UK universities to offer games courses.
• Our dedicated games tutors have a vast range of industry experience and an extensive network of contacts in the games industry. Members of our team have worked in AAA studios, run their own studios, authored books and are actively conducting research.
• Team working and collaboration are essential for games industry success, so we encourage you to work on games projects in interdisciplinary teams with students from our other games courses.
• We organise studio visits and field trips to games development companies, and will encourage and support you to undertake work experience and industrial placements with relevant studios.
• Industry experts from the leading games studios in the UK, along with Bolton graduates now successful in the sector, are regularly invited to give guest lectures on aspects of games development.
• We’ll help and support you to develop a portfolio of work that demonstrates your skills in readiness to impress potential employers.

The MSc in Cloud and Network Security offers graduates with a background in networking, system administration or cloud computing the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of security and operations of computer systems.

You’ll have the opportunity to study the latest methodologies and development techniques and develop a detailed understanding of computer operating systems, virtualisation and networking. We’ll support you as you acquire the capacity to adapt and learn new skills ready to respond as the computer industry evolves throughout your career.

The programme has been designed collaboratively with industrial partners, giving you to the chance to equip yourself with professional skills, and understand the ethical and environmental issues you’ll encounter in your professional life.

You’ll also be encouraged to prepare for your postgraduate career with coursework based on a series of realistic scenarios covering technical issues, proposals and reports.

PLEASE NOTE  If you start this programme in January then the course duration is 18 months.

Highlights

• We continually monitor and update the content of our MSc programmes so they offer the best preparation for the employment marketplace.
• Our teaching staff all have comprehensive industry experience, enabling them to offer practical insights to students grappling with real-world problems.
• During the course, you’ll have the opportunity to learn the necessary skills to scale from small infrastructure to major cloud infrastructure applications.
• We take pride in our approach to our students, taking time to give all individuals the help and support they need to succeed.
• Our commitment to provide the best possible learning environments has seen us make significant investments in our IT facilities.

Key Features

• Free or significantly reduced software available to our students from our educational partners including RedHat, Fedora, Adobe and Microsoft.
• Access to vendor qualifications from Cisco and RedHat through our unique access to the RedHat academy.
• You’ll have access to our server architecture, enabling you to develop your cloud computing skills both on and off campus.
• Industry partners provide relevant, up-to-date input to our teaching and live student projects.
• Our MSc programme is supported by dedicated laboratories, servers and end hosts with industry-standard hardware and software.
• Our lecturers take time to build strong personal relationships with all students, enabling questions to be answered quickly and easily.

Business management qualifications open doors and are considered essential whether you are looking to pursue a career in business, or achieve higher levels of responsibility in your current work.

Our BSc (Hons) in Business Management (Enterprise) offers a strong grounding in an essential range of contemporary business management subjects combined with the opportunity to focus your studies in the final year. When you successfully complete the course you’ll also receive the CMI Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management.

By studying core modules that are common between all our BSc (Hons) Business Management programmes, you’ll be exposed to key concepts in areas such as business law, leadership and people management, marketing, strategic management, information systems and big data, project management, finance, innovation and enterprise. This solid foundation will support your advanced studies into specialist areas that support entrepreneurship, such as e-commerce and marketing practice, company law, and financial reporting for management.

Developing your employability is a key focus of this dynamic and flexible programme. Real-life case studies, guest speakers and industry visits are designed to help you to understand the business environment and the needs of employers in local, national and international contexts. We’ll support you to develop sought-after skills such as communication, data analysis, time management, team working and problem solving.

We also aim to help you develop lifelong learning skills so that you can take ownership of your professional development for the future, maximising your potential for success.

Highlights

• Our team of highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic business management lecturers offer face-to-face sessions and one-to-one support, ensuring you can access help and advice when you need it.
• On successful completion of this dual award course you’ll receive both an academic degree and a professionally-recognised management qualification – the CMI Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management. You don’t need to take extra exams or coursework to achieve the Diploma – we combine our degree module and CMI assessments streamlining your route to both qualifications.
• This course is part of our Business Management suite of degrees. All students study the same modules at the first two levels of the course to gain an in depth knowledge of the major business disciplines. At Honours level, you can follow the specialist pathway in Enterprise, choose to transfer to one of our other specialist pathways in Law, People Management, Supply Chain, Finance, Marketing or Retail, or follow the core Business Management route.
• Face-to-face sessions and one-to-one support is offered by our team of highly experienced and enthusiastic lecturers who have worked in a wide range of businesses ranging from multinational organisation to SME’s.
• The University offers excellent 24/7 library and IT facilities, WiFi, and well-appointed learning areas.

Key Features

• This course is offered within our vibrant Institute of Management environment in Bolton town centre.
• We use small group and tutorial teaching, so you have the opportunity to benefit from the excellent support offered by our teaching staff.
• We regularly invite guest speakers who hold senior positions in industry and practice, enabling you to benefit from their knowledge and advice.
• Course materials are available online, allowing you to prepare work at home and make the most of the highly interactive in-class tuition.
• Contemporary research findings are woven into our teaching. We offer a robust academic underpinning to your studies of business management.
• Our dedicated team will support you as you develop critical thinking and research skills and apply these during your final year dissertation.

The University of Bolton’s MSc Social Care, Health and Wellbeing is designed to prepare future leaders for the health and social care sector. The social, cultural and political climate has an enormous impact on the lives of vulnerable people in our society, influencing the care they receive and the life chances they experience. This postgraduate course is designed to develop your awareness and understanding of these factors while cultivating your leadership, critical analysis and communication skills. We focus on supporting you to integrate these ideas with your knowledge of social care, health and wellbeing, helping you to achieve career success and champion the uniqueness of individuals, carers and their families.

The aim of this course is to extend your already considerable professional skills and knowledge with specialist modules that deepen your understanding of areas such as equality and diversity, integration and collaboration in health and social care, and the importance of engaging with service users. Our expert team will help you gain critical reflection, analysis and evaluation skills that support your ability to determine the impact of professional interventions in social care and health services.

Combining this knowledge with the principles and techniques of academic research and investigation will help develop your evidence-based practice, and grow your skills in evaluating options and formulating creative solutions to complex problems. Studying leadership and management styles, theories and frameworks will support you to become more actively involved in the planning, delivery and transformation of social care and health services.

Overall, our aim is to help you gain the professional and transferable skills to move forward in your career, improving the services you provide to individuals and their communities.

Highlights

• Our students are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds – sharing the individual and unique educational insights and perspectives of your peers helps to enrich your learning experience.
• We promote research and critical enquiry helping you learn to make sound, evidence-based independent judgements.
• We have an excellent record of working with NHS, social care and community-based services, enabling us to offer postgraduate programmes that are responsive to employer and service user needs.
• Modules on this programme combine concepts and knowledge from across the divisions of health, community and early years, fostering a dynamic multi-professional approach.
• On successful completion of this course you’ll be awarded an MSc Social Care, Health and Wellbeing from the University of Bolton.

Key Features

• Face-to-face sessions and one-to-one support is offered by our team of highly experienced, enthusiastic and dedicated experts.
• Staff and students from across our Faculty of Health and Wellbeing work closely together. By studying alongside people from related specialisms and sectors, such as youth, community and early years, you can benefit from a wider range of knowledge and experience that supports cross-disciplinary thinking and inter-professional working.
• Our academic team is actively involved in social care, health and wellbeing research, helping you to explore issues from a robust research-informed knowledge base.
• Specialists in the field of social care and health will be invited to join us as guest speakers and lecturers, offering you first-hand live examples of current practice.
• Our highly experienced team will support you as you develop critical thinking and research evaluation skills and apply these during your independent master’s-level project.

Literature is an extraordinary resource for broadening your intellectual understanding. It’s one of the most powerful ways we can experience others’ lives, enjoy worlds we’ve never visited, and develop our appreciation for the sheer power of words in expressing ideas and emotions. Through in-depth study and analysis of a range of texts and formats – including prose, poetry and plays – you’ll have the chance to hone your critical skills and develop your prowess as a creative communicator.

We’ll guide and support you through a rich course of study that should help you extend your understanding of language and how it can inform, persuade, shock and delight. Join us on a journey into the world of literature, where we’ll help you develop a deeper understanding of the social, political, historical and cultural contexts, and the impact of literary texts.

Our experienced and highly qualified team offers you a supportive environment in which to explore the central role of language in the creation of meaning. Through research, discussion, argument and analysis, you’ll have opportunities to learn to use language, effectively and powerfully, to achieve your goals.

Highlights

• Our English and Creative Writing courses are ranked second in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2020.
• The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2020 also ranks our English subject area as top in the UK for student experience and second in the UK for teaching quality.
• You’ll get the opportunity to benefit from our strong links with external creative organisations, including the nationally acclaimed Octagon Theatre, Bolton, where you can gain behind-the-scenes access and workshop experience.
• To give you publishing experience, we encourage you to submit your work to our literary magazine The Bolton Review.
• Our dedicated and enthusiastic lecturers are professional writers and researchers whose work is published or produced on stage, screen or radio.
• We have excellent industry contacts and strong links to external creative organisations such as publishers, production companies, theatres, libraries, art galleries, schools, funding bodies and arts development agencies – so we can offer you work experience in a wide variety of settings.

Key Features

• We offer popular options in women’s writing, Gothic fiction, children’s literature, film adaptation and contemporary poetry, as well as a range of creative writing workshops in poetry, fiction and drama.
• You can benefit from the latest thinking and discoveries, as our course tutors are active researchers in poetry, prose and drama, and feed their knowledge back into the curriculum.
• We’ll help you develop a range of skills highly valued by employers, such as written and verbal communication, presenting information and ideas, argument and persuasion, working to tight deadlines, and research and critical analysis.
• You can attend guest lectures from literary scholars, and hear contemporary writers’ work at the University’s regular literature events.

The University of Bolton’s MA in Early Childhood Studies is designed to prepare future leaders for the early years sector. The social, cultural and political climate has an enormous impact on the lives of young children, influencing their development and affecting their life chances. This postgraduate course is designed to develop your awareness and understanding of these factors while cultivating your leadership, critical analysis and communication skills. We focus on supporting you to integrate these ideas with your knowledge of childhood development, helping you to achieve career success and champion the uniqueness of every child.

The aim of this course is to extend your already considerable professional skills and knowledge with specialist modules that deepen your understanding of areas such as equality and diversity, early years curriculum development and childhood in a global context. Our expert team will help you gain critical reflection, analysis and evaluation skills that support your ability to determine the impact of professional interventions on the development of children and across the early years sector.

Combining this knowledge with the principles and techniques of academic research and investigation will help develop your evidence-based practice, and grow your skills in evaluating options and formulating creative solutions to complex problems. Studying leadership and management styles, theories and frameworks will support you to become more actively involved in the planning, delivery and transformation of early years and children’s services.

Overall, our aim is to help you gain the professional and transferable skills to move forward in your career, improving the services you provide to the children in your care and their families.

Highlights

• Our students are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds – sharing the individual and unique educational insights and perspectives of your peers helps to enrich your learning experience.
• We promote research and critical enquiry helping you learn to make sound, evidence-based independent judgements.
• Our excellent links with over 70 partners and external agencies means we can offer a wide variety of perspectives and research opportunities; for instance, we work with youth and community centres, early years settings, children’s centres, schools, alternative education projects, women's refuges and community projects, as well as housing, health, leisure and youth training schemes, resettlement projects, and detached, outreach and mentoring projects.
• On successful completion of this course you will be awarded an MA in Early Childhood Studies from the University of Bolton.

Key Features

• Face-to-face sessions and one-to-one support is offered by our team of highly experienced, enthusiastic and dedicated experts.
• Staff and students from across our Faculty of Health and Wellbeing work closely together. By studying alongside people from related specialisms and sectors, such as youth, community and health and social care you can benefit from a wider range of knowledge and experience that supports cross-disciplinary thinking and inter-professional working.
• Our academic team is actively involved in early childhood studies research, helping you to explore issues from a robust research-informed knowledge base.
• Specialists in the field of early years and childhood studies will be invited to join us as guest speakers and lecturers, offering you first-hand live examples of current practice.
• Our highly experienced team will support you as you develop critical thinking and research evaluation skills and apply these during your independent masters-level project.

The BA (Hons) Education and Learning is a fascinating degree at the University of Bolton, giving you the chance to study a balanced combination of current educational policy, the history of education, and sociology, philosophy and psychology. It’s a great opportunity to explore in depth some of the key current issues affecting education in the UK and abroad.

Key themes on this course include critical and reflective thinking, equality and diversity. By thinking about how we learn consciously and subconsciously, we’ll guide you in an exploration of how formal learning, alongside acquired knowledge, shapes our lives, interests and value structures.

We also encourage you to research and analyse a range of educational practices, and reflect on your own and others’ experiences of education. This will help you think critically about learning and teaching, and how education is perceived and received.

On competing this course successfully, you will be well prepared for related postgraduate studies. Although the course doesn’t lead directly to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), you’ll have first-hand experience in schools or other educational establishments to support your application for teacher training.

Highlights

• Small class sizes mean a more keenly focused attention on your learning needs and strategies for success.
• You’ll be studying at a University known for its friendly atmosphere, and get to study alongside students from a variety of backgrounds, each with an individual and unique perspective on education.
• Our professional and approachable tutors will guide and support you throughout your course, offering attentive one-to-one support.

Key Features

• The programme is designed to help you gain some of the required knowledge and experience required for direct entry to Primary Teacher Training courses (QTS), or for entry-level employment in education.
• You’ll have the chance to take on a systematic and reflective study of education that’s illustrated and informed by the diversity of teaching and learning approaches in different sub-sectors of education.
• You’ll be able to take at least one placement opportunity in an educational setting, where you’ll observe learning and teaching in progress, and talk to teachers and students about their roles and experiences.
• Our teaching draws on your own experiences of learning as a starting point for understanding the formal educational process. This means contributing to research and discussion through critical reflection on your own education, and by listening to others’ experiences.

Every day we read adverts, engage with websites and spend money based on choices influenced by messages delivered through graphic design. Graphic designers produce content for digital and traditional media. They creatively combine photography, illustration and typography to communicate messages for clients from big brands to small businesses.

This industry has seen massive changes in working methods, practices and media over the last ten years. However, the creative thought process that designers employ remains the same. Built on a series of diverse and challenging practical assignments underpinned by appropriate theory, our Graphic Design degree aims to give you the skills to understand the creative process from start to finish.

The course is designed to help you understand the creative and technical possibilities of contemporary graphics image making coupled with great typography and driven by original thinking. We'll encourage you to explore the theoretical and historical elements that that influence design and think critically about your own work and that of others.

We'll also focus on helping you to develop career-relevant skills. Creativity, technical knowledge, problem solving, team working, independence, time management and communications skills are all essential for success as a professional graphic designer.

Highlights

• Our Art courses are placed in the top ten in the UK for student-to-staff ratio by the Guardian University League Tables 2020, so you have access to individual tutor support and small group teaching.
• You'll have the opportunity to work on client-led briefs and be encouraged to engage in additional live briefs during your spare time so that you can gain industry-relevant professional experience to enhance your CV.
• You'll be encouraged to apply for placements, internships, awards, competitions, masterclasses and other external development opportunities, such as the D&AD (Design and Art Directors) folder clinics – the ‘Oscars’ of graphic arts.
• We'll offer you the opportunity to present your work to the public and impress potential employers during Bolton School of the Arts’ Creative Showcase in your final year.

Key Features

• Our £10 million purpose-built facilities include extensive computer suites featuring the latest design and graphics software, professional standard traditional and digital photographic studios, and fully equipped fine art workshops and studios.
• You can learn to use the latest design software, while being encouraged to generate ideas and problem solve using traditional media and techniques.
• You'll have the opportunity to use traditional graphic design media, including wood block printing, screen printing and lino cutting.
• You'll have access to a rich visiting speaker programme, providing insight into industry experts’ professional practice and up-to-the-minute developments in the sector.
• Our specialist tutors and technical support staff have professional experience and industry connections.
• We offer opportunities for you to participate in foreign study trips, as well as visit current exhibitions and events at galleries and arts centres around the UK. We also encourage you to attend design-related professional development lectures and conferences.

Games are serious business. The industry needs professionals with in-depth technical games knowledge and creative vision combined with business know-how and marketing expertise. The University of Bolton’s MA in Games Development offers you the chance to grow your skills and confidence in all these areas, gaining experience as a developer, and graduating with at least one credit on a published game to your name.

Designed around team-based development projects, the course involves you working with other students to form and run ‘indie’ style teams. Our highly-experienced games team will support and encourage you as you learn to plan, design, develop and publish games.

We will work to further extend your already substantial understanding of game development concepts and production methods, helping you master an arsenal of advanced tools and techniques to create compelling and inventive experiences.

Alongside these games-specific skills, we offer commercial and business knowledge for the creative sector; for instance, business planning, client negotiation, pitching for projects, responding to project briefs, intellectual property licencing and marketing campaign planning. Our academic team will provide critical support while helping you hone your project management and other transferable skills, ready to progress your career in the industry.

Highlights

• You will have opportunities to create and publish games for a variety of platforms including mobile, desktop, VR and console, building an impressive portfolio as you gain experience creating and running an indie studio.
• All the games staff at Bolton have worked on published games and most have experience working at or with publishers and developers – collectively, we have over seventy game credits on published titles.
• We offer focused teaching based on the latest research and industry trends and you will be encouraged to apply your new knowledge immediately in your projects.
• Our projects are flexible and designed to offer appropriate challenges based on you and your development team mates’ skills, competencies and interests.
• Industry experts from the leading games studios in the UK, along with Bolton graduates now successful in the sector, are regularly invited to give guest lectures on aspects of games development.

Key Features

• University of Bolton games graduates have been enjoying careers in the games industry for longer than most – we were one of the first UK universities to offer games courses and we now offer specialisms in Games Design, Games Art and Games Programming.
• We share your passion for games. Our dedicated games tutors offer a vast range of industry experience, a wide network of contacts in the games industry, and knowledge of the latest games research and developments.
• This course offers intensive practical experience in an environment designed to emulate conditions in the industry – you will be expected to spend approximately 30 hours per week in our development studio.
• Our well-equipped, dedicated games studios feature high-specification hardware and industry-standard software, along with modern and vintage consoles.

Over the next decade, information and communication technology (ICT), including fifth-generation (5G) mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT), will have a significant bearing on how we go about our daily lives. Our MSc ROBUST focuses on preparing you for industry. It’s designed to take you from your bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronic engineering, computer science or mechatronics to a role in advanced engineering and technology. Our dedicated, knowledgeable team will cover the key areas needed to make you stand out to employers.

We are now entering an information society, where technology-assisted living permeates our environment. Smart cities, towns and villages throughout the world are embracing technologies for a more connected and sustainable way of life and agri-tech has the potential to make farming more efficient through the use of wireless sensors, satellite earth imagery and drones. Additionally, all-electric autonomous vehicles are set to create a new, environmentally friendly travel experience and factories will make greater use of robotics and IoT to become fully automated, under what is known as Industry 4.0. These are exciting times for the technology sector, with significant opportunities for challenging and rewarding careers throughout the world.

Highlights

• The MSc ROBUST course provides a unique blend of modules, delivered by experienced and knowledgeable academic staff.
• Key enabling technologies are introduced through dedicated 20-credit modules, which deal with the principles of mobile communications, satellite communications and applications, wireless sensors and the Internet of Things, autonomous systems and robotics.
• The technical modules are supported by a module addressing research skills and methods, which provides a solid platform for a 60-credit ROBUST project, culminating in a dissertation in one of the subjects covered by the course.

Key Features

• The MSc ROBUST course has been carefully designed to address the worldwide demand for top technology talent.
• The course follows the University’s ethos of being teaching intensive, research informed (TIRI).
• The course is designed to meet professional institution standards in the UK and Europe.
• This course is based at the University of Bolton’s campus in Greater Manchester, which is home to one of the fastest-growing digital technology sectors in Europe and boasts the largest number of digital workers in the UK outside of London. In particular, the University is only a short distance from MediaCity:UK, which hosts some the UK’s leading technology organisations, including Vodafone and its 5G testbed, Smart Cities Catapult, and Huawei. (Reference: http://mediacityuk.co.uk/newsroom/huawei-opens-new-office-in-mediacityuk/ accessed on 2 March 2020)