Master of Science in Biomedical Science

at University of Plymouth United Kingdom

Physical geography and geology examines how the Earth’s surface is shaped by natural and human processes. This knowledge is key to addressing many of the complex sustainability challenges facing the planet. Our new modules explore geohazards and risk, clean energy transitions, and long term environmental change. Students gain specialist academic, international fieldwork and laboratory skills providing a springboard to an exciting and diverse range of careers.

Have you Considered

• BSc (Hons) Geography
• BSc (Hons) Geography with Ocean Science
• BSc (Hons) Geology
• BSc (Hons) Geology with Ocean Science

Key Features

• Our new modules address critical sustainability challenges: reducing risk from natural hazards, harnessing cleaner energy sources and how to combat climate and environmental change.
• Our approachable staff share their cutting-edge research and expertise through varied teaching practices in lectures, tutorials, practical classes and field courses.
• Learn to apply the latest techniques in the field and laboratory. Our substantial fieldwork programme provides opportunities in a variety of UK and overseas locations including Death Valley USA, Spain, Sicily and Cyprus.
• Study modules dedicated to addressing the connection between physical geography and geology, such as ‘long-term landscape development’.
• Progress your skills in our open access laboratory, LABplus.
• Develop your confidence with a personal tutor, providing you with weekly guidance throughout your first year.
• Our PALS mentoring scheme provides you with support from students in the year ahead.
• Plymouth's coastal location, close to Dartmoor and two UNESCO World Heritage sites provides the perfect setting for studying geology, with opportunities for fieldwork right on our doorstep.
• Receive essential field safety equipment free as part of your welcome package.
• Work towards becoming a Chartered Geologist, our accreditation by the Geological Society, the world’s oldest and most prestigious national learned society for geology, helps you to gain the required experience.
• Take the opportunity to spend your second year studying abroad in Canada, Australia, USA or elsewhere through our direct exchange, Erasmus or ISEP programmes. Plymouth is currently the only UK institution to offer exchanges through ISEP, giving our students the greatest range of Earth science exchange opportunities available.

Do you want to pursue a career as an eye-care professional? Here at Plymouth you benefit from a pioneering clinical degree – the first to bring optometry to the South West. Our course has been built in consultation with experts in the field and has been carefully designed to equip you with the core clinical skills, professional training and confidence required for a successful career as a General Optical Council (GOC) registered optometrist.

Key Features

• Become part of a pioneering clinical degree programme – the first to bring optometry to the South West.
• Develop your clinical and communication skills while working with real patients at our Centre for Eyecare Excellence (CEE) optometry practice throughout your third year.
• See your studies in a real-world context, with regional practice placements during Years 1 and 2 and a hospital placement in Year 3.
• Explore the theory side of the course at the Peninsula Allied Health Centre with brand new clinical facilities, equipment and learning spaces. 
• Join a close-knit team of staff and students and benefit from an open, supportive environment.
• Boost your employability through learning in a way that’s based on solving problems, working together and communicating well with others.
• Graduate with the scientific and clinical knowledge, as well as the professional training, required by the General Optical Council (GOC) to enter the pre-registration year for qualification as an optometrist.
• According to the 2019 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE)* survey, 100 per cent of students were in work/study six months after finishing.
• To complement your formal learning we offer regular PALS sessions that provide the opportunity for you to learn with and from your peers. Share knowledge, discuss ideas, and ask questions in a relaxed and friendly environment.

Gain advanced theoretical and practical knowledge from our world-leading experts in intelligent and autonomous systems. Graduate ready to pursue an exciting career in the robotics industry and academic research. Help resolve real-world problems in areas such as home automation, robotic assistance, agriculture, medicine, transportation, art and entertainment, deep-sea or space exploration.

On this programme you’ll gain a solid and broad understanding of the latest developments and issues in robotics. You’ll build theoretical and practical knowledge of control and design as well as covering the interface between real-world devices, autonomous processing and evaluation of acquired information. You’ll investigate user interaction and intelligent decision-making and immerse yourself in an innovative project inspired by the latest developments in technology and society. You’ll have access to a robotics club and to a seminar series so that you can keep up-to-date with advances in the industry and academia

Key Features

Digital Media Design will teach you high level industry production skills including coding, 3D modelling, UI/UX (user interface and user experience) design, creative practice and design skills. You’ll get a chance to make games, websites, apps, interactive and virtual reality experiences. At the cutting edge of art and design for 28 years the Institute of Digital Art and Technology has graduates across in digital creative industries worldwide – including Apple, Nintendo, Spotify and Sony.

Key Features

• Stay one step ahead with a programme designed in close collaboration with industry leaders to ensure technologies, skills and techniques are bang up to date.
• Access all areas – keep working into the evening in our dedicated lab space open until 10.00pm, and take advantage of our other amazing facilities, including a 35 seat, 360° immersive vision theatre.
• Your assessments are 100% coursework – no exams!
• Be inspired by lecturers who are experts in their field, with backgrounds in both industry and research. The exciting work going on in our research groups, i-DAT and Transtech, feeds back into the teaching on this course.
• Get ready for work - take the optional Placement Year (after your second year) and secure a paid placement in industry. You’ll gain invaluable professional experience.
• Our graduates have gone on to work in some of the biggest tech, design and games companies worldwide including: Electronic Arts, IBM, Yahoo and Reddit!
• Broaden your horizons with great enrichment activities including overseas field trips in Amsterdam, Berlin and Barcelona to attend conferences and visit galleries.
• Professional networking is vital within the creative industries – we embed our students within local, national and international networks, conferences and festivals such as Digital Plymouth, Art Futura, CodeMotion and Transmediale
• Get exclusive insights with talks from guest speakers from the creative arts and technology industries.

Are you ready to make your mark in the legal world? Our academically challenging law degree will prepare you for a successful career. With a strong focus on developing skills in the workplace, we’ll ground you in the fundamentals of law so you can set your sights high.

Key Features

• Get ahead with a programme designed to help you stand out with employers, whatever your career goals.
• Have flexibility and choice in what you study: the first two years include traditional subjects, such as Criminal Law and Tort, alongside learning dispute resolution skills and a range of optional modules. In your final year you have lots of choice so can tailor your degree to your interests and career ambitions. Our optional modules include legal subjects such as Family, Employment, Environmental, Intellectual Property, Business, Immigration, Human Rights, and Cybercrime.
• Study modules with emphasis on developing your legal and employability skills as well as professional practice.
• Gain valuable, professional experience by participating in our award-winning, pro-bono Law Clinic. Here you work under the guidance of legal practitioners, with real clients making a real difference in the community, without taking time out of your studies. You can do this for credit towards your degree or as a volunteer.
• Join our outstanding Student Law Society, which offers networking opportunities and organises competitions. Our students have excelled in winning national client interviewing and mooting competitions.
• Benefit from excellent research-informed and practice-led teaching by highly qualified staff, including legal practitioners. We have internationally renowned researchers in areas such as the environment, marine protection, immigration and intellectual property. We give policy advice, regionally and nationally, and work for change. We publish an on-line journal, the Plymouth Law Review, with contributions from both staff and students.
• Be part of a supportive community and learning environment, with a dedicated personal tutor system and strong alumni links.

Explore the driving forces of relationships between countries and cultures in the 21st century close to where the G7 leaders met in 2021. Unpick all aspects of international relations from law to economics, diplomacy and governance to help you build your own critical thinking skills to navigate some of the major issues facing society. Combine theory and practice so you can better understand the decision-making that drives change. Hone your skills by representing Plymouth at the model UN.

Key Features

• We’re very proud of our National Student Survey (NSS) 2018 return showing that 100 per cent of our students agree staff are good at explaining things.*
• Travel the world through our international student exchange program. From the Czech Republic and Poland, to Canada and the USA, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to gain insights into international relations worldwide.
• Look at how politics works in practice by visiting the Middle East and southern Africa on university-subsidised fieldtrips led by the academic staff.
• Be inspired by teaching rooted in research. Our staff are leading experts in their fields; areas of expertise include popular protest in the Middle East, British and American foreign policy, development in Africa, global environmental politics, security studies and the politics of the European Union.
• Explore the evolution of politics internationally. Debate contemporary worldwide issues, current affairs and major political events. Ask those difficult questions about war, hunger and poverty in the developing world.
• Engage with contemporary international issues and take part in exclusive events, film screenings and lectures, through the Politics and International Affairs Society.
• Differentiate yourself in an international sector with industry experience and modern language skills. As journalists, politicians' assistants and public affairs consultants, our graduates have gone on to work for the European Union, United Nations and UK Civil Service.
• Investigate daily headlines: discover the international and political ideas that influence society.
• Benefit from a course which received excellent ratings for teaching and student satisfaction, in the Guardian University Guide 2015 (within the subject league table for Politics).
• Enhance your employability by participating in the our internship scheme.

Around 70 per cent of our planet is ocean with an average depth of 3000m. To understand the biology of this vast area, we must also understand the oceans themselves. Marine biology and oceanography studies the biology and ecology of the marine realm, with a focus on offshore and deep-sea ecosystems, and the physical and chemical processes that shape them. Teaching uses both small and large research vessels, providing you with an unrivalled experience of open ocean marine biology.

You will develop a host of practical skills that will prepare you for your chosen career and make you attractive to employers. You will have the opportunity to gain the HSE PRO SCUBA qualification, for those with a suitable background in diving. You’ll also gain invaluable experience on a six or 12-month international placement during your third year, or working in a local host organisation alongside your studies.

Key Features

Discover why art from the past still matters to our modern society in the city that spawned Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Society. Learn what art can teach us about the past and how it can help us shape a better future. Build links with art historians and archivists and prepare for a career in the art world through our connections with high profile, international institutions like the National Gallery and Tate Britain, and benefit from the contacts of our published academics.

Key Features

• Art throughout history. Art history at Plymouth enables you to explore our complex past and navigate visual culture. Let our immersive modules take you across the world, from the Renaissance period to the present, from 14th-century fresco painting in Italy to artistic responses to the atomic bomb.

Education is a driving force for a better and more just world. BA (Hons) Education informs, supports and promotes those looking to become innovators, pioneers and leaders of societal change. Educators can have a lasting impact on people’s lives. Whether you want to become a teacher, work in the social or care industries, as an educator in business, the environment or community development, BA (Hons) Education offers a flexible path to challenging and rewarding careers.

Explore social and political issues, consider diversity in education and discover how the environment shapes learning. This degree will help you make a difference to adults' and children's wellbeing and our global future.

Key Features

• We are about exploration: we love Plymouth but we also love to explore. Within the course there is the opportunity to broaden your understanding of Education in different environments and cultures: residential trips; an option to study for the second semester in the USA; work based learning placements, and more.
• Learning and working with others: students are given space and tools to develop your individual voice, critical insight, and knowledge over a wide range of the education field. We encourage you to engage with different views and ideas about what a meaningful, inclusive and socially just form of education is.
• Enriched student experience: there are many additional opportunities to nourish a thriving student experience, such as benefitting from visiting speakers; wide ranging free public lectures/performances; Makaton training; teaching English as a second language fully certified course; and a range of volunteering experiences and placements in schools and the community.
• Developing confidence and critical thinking: we encourage and foster students’ knowledge and understanding of yourself and others, to develop confidence and conviction in personal opinions and beliefs and to have these challenged, as well as to build the courage to step outside of your comfort zones and to embrace new things.
• Becoming a researcher: students arrive imagining they might enter teaching, or social work, etc, at the end. Often, however, as you develop as an academic researcher, it opens up new opportunities and you catch the research bug! Doing research also helps to build confidence and skills which are useful for many work disciplines in the years ahead.
• Individual journeys and development: one of the things we particularly prize is the way we work to nurture, challenge and encourage personal growth and development. The course has the journey of 'you' at its heart: the person you wish to be, providing you with the enthusiasm and knowledge you need change the world around us.
• Early Childhood options: You can dip your toe into another program; as well as the BA (Hons) Education course, you will have the opportunity in your second year to take one or two modules in Early Childhood Studies.
• Other learning opportunities: Take advantage of paid or unpaid work-based learning module/s to help you stand out when it comes to starting your career. You can also participate in education-related volunteering, or pursue the opportunities presented in our International Students Exchange Programme.

Get the best preparation to take on the challenge of a career as a primary teacher focusing on Special Educational Needs (SEN). With teaching methods shaped by our own research expertise, and plenty of on-the-job training in the classroom, you’ll gain the confidence and experience you need to work with SEN students in a variety of roles and settings. We’ll support you to explore the diversity of how children learn and develop your own toolkit for inclusive and effective teaching.

Have you considered

• BEd (Hons) Primary (FS/KS1 with QTS)
• BEd (Hons) Primary (KS1/KS2 with QTS)

Key Features

• Launch your career: obtaining integrated Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), which means you can begin your teaching career immediately. Expand your horizons, enhance your practical experience and set yourself above the competition.
• SEN focus area: this degree will look at teaching over the primary phase but also look at the way SEN and inclusion feeds into KS1 and KS2 preparing you to work with children from any phase of primary education in either mainstream or special schools.
• Partnership with special schools: throughout this degree you will be visiting special schools and working with learners with inclusive needs. You will have a good understanding of how these schools support children with their learning.
• No exams: learn through interactive workshops and with no end-of-year/semester exams.
• Close links to the Master of Education (MA Ed): this link enables students to achieve enhanced career progression in a profession in which masters level attainment is increasingly valued.
• Work based learning opportunities: students benefit from a wide range of placement types within our partnership of over 500 schools and other settings, from single days to extended block placements to develop and consolidate QTS standards.
• Professional identity: from the very start of the programme you are considered as a teacher in development. The programme supports you as you develop your professional standards and identity.
• Research -informed teaching: not only are all modules enhanced by tutors’ active research interests but students are immersed in a research culture and benefit from learning about the advantages of researching their practice first hand.
• Student support: within the Plymouth Institute of Education there is a strong ethos of support for all students. Your professional tutor will actively engage with you throughout the BEd programme to offer guidance and support in both academic and pastoral terms.
• OfSTED recognised: recent inspection rated the Primary ITE provision at Plymouth as good in all aspects, with particular strengths in the partnership led elements of the programmes and the quality of the graduates.