Master of Science in Marine Conservation

at University of Plymouth United Kingdom

 Autonomous systems will increasingly be adopted into every aspect of our daily lives. The future of autonomy, in the transport sector alone, is projected to grow tenfold to over US$550 billion by 2026. Plymouth is fast becoming a global centre for excellence in marine and robotic autonomy systems development. You will have the opportunity to use our specialist laboratories including the COAST and Robotics Laboratory for your dissertation.

Our one year course covers core principles of this emerging field: sensor technologies for machine perception; machine learning and AI for adaptation and decision making; embedded systems, communications, security and data management, for safe and efficient operations of an Autonomous System. The course also encompasses general ethical issues related to the societal acceptance of these systems. The course has been designed in conjunction with employers who contribute seminars and guest lectures.

Key Features

Digital technologies such as 3D printing and immersive media are driving the creative industries, influencing the development of products, spaces and services we engage with daily. This is yielding new jobs and market opportunities for creative thinkers able to understand the intersections between technical and design thinking. This course will allow you to seize these opportunities by increasing your skills in design technologies and ensuring you can tackle challenges in emerging markets.

Key Features

• Join fast-growing industry sectors with a degree from the number a top 10 UK Young University for Art, Design and Architecture (Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2019) and in the First-Class Category of Sustainable Universities in the UK (People and Planet Green League 2015).
• Develop valuable transferable skills in digital design, design thinking and digital fabrication applicable to a range of industry sectors such as manufacturing, advanced construction and industrial design.
• Benefit from our newly developed workshop spaces, with state-of-the-art equipment and technical support for digital fabrication and immersive visualisation.Gain multidisciplinary experience in a vibrant project-based learning environment by working alongside BA/BSc students, associate tutors from industry and academic staff from the School of Art, Design and Architecture, and the School of Engineering.
• Gain valuable workplace experience with a year-long placement in industry in the UK or abroad between years 2 and 3. Our industry links will help you find a placement, boosting your studies with practical experience and developing the contacts that can lead to future employment.
• 100 per cent coursework. No exams!
• Explore the Industry 4.0 revolution with site visits and field trips, where you will observe a range of sectors, innovative solutions and technology development and practices within and outside the UK.
• Opportunity to pursue postgraduate studies as well as cross-collaboration with other courses such as, among others, MA Smart Urban Futures, MSc Advanced Engineering Design, MA Digital Media Design, MA/MSc Integrated Design Innovation and/or MSc High Performance Buildings.

This course enables you to gain an in-depth practical understanding of the role of human resource management (HRM) in today's businesses, which sets you apart in the world of graduate employment. The course involves extensive involvement from guest speakers, as well as a range of practical activities, role play and case studies, enabling you to apply your knowledge of HR to real-life scenarios.

You’ll be taught by staff that have a considerable depth of human resource management experience from large employers such as the NHS and have undertaken research for professional bodies such as CIPD and ACAS. You will also be supported in your study by subject tutors and receive individual support for your academic and personal development from your personal tutor. You will acquire improved competences that will significantly enhance your employability in an HR role.

Key Features

• Gain a well rounded academic experience, through the provision of a mixture of taught modules and independent learning. 
• Benefit from the extensive use of guest speakers. This enhances the practitioner and practical focus elements of the programme and brings an added dimension of current practice and recognised issues directly to the classroom.
• Accredited by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
• Graduate with Associate Membership of the CIPD.
• Be taught by staff that have a considerable depth of human resource management experience from large employers such as the NHS and have undertaken research for professional bodies such as CIPD and ACAS.
• Undertake a range of practical activities to enhance the application of your learning to HR and managerial roles in an organisational context; this will include role play and case study activities.
• Choose and utilise a range of skills and techniques relevant to the management of people, including recruitment, selection, reward and retention.
• Learn to successfully manage and deliver a project on time.
• Gain the skills to write reports for commercial and academic audiences.
• Focus on enterprise and sustainability in human resource management and organisational practice.
• Evaluate actions and performance to enhance self-management, and devise plans to enhance personal and career development.
• Benefit from individual support - you are supported in your study by subject tutors and receive individual support for your academic and personal development from your personal tutor.
• Acquire improved competences that will significantly enhance your employability in an HR role.
• Progress on to further study with our MA Human Resource Management programme, or move into a graduate scheme entry.

The geosciences are critical to shaping the future of our planet. Geologists use their knowledge of the earth’s evolution and the physical, chemical and biological process that shape our planet, to pioneer sustainable futures. 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.

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.
• 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.

Are you ready to make the difference? Discover the formula to teaching mathematics with our expert staff and world leading researchers. You’ll gain a solid foundation in mathematical and statistical modules, while the final year combines educational theory and school experience. Time spent in the classroom will give you the skills, knowledge and confidence to progress to a teacher training course such as a PGCE, or move into one of many careers where high-level mathematical skills are essential.

Key Features

• Gain classroom experience in a placement module, supporting mathematics teaching in a secondary or primary school for one morning a week throughout your final year. This will help you become an effective communicator.
• Dr Jenny Sharp who leads the Education modules has worked with schools in many different capacities, and is regularly invited to run workshops and masterclasses all around the country, including at the Royal Institution, other universities and in schools.
• An in-depth individual project gives you an introduction to mathematical educational theory, an ideal preparation for teacher training courses.
• Help others and gain hands on expertise by taking part in our Mathematics Enrichment Programme activities. You can gradually develop a workshop for a Mathematics masterclass.
• Gain high level understanding of modern pure and applied mathematics, and statistics; this knowledge base opens up many mathematical careers to you.

This degree is strongly interdisciplinary and practical, providing you with the knowledge and skills to help build and manage solutions to environmental challenges on land and in our oceans. It draws on a wide range of modules from environmental science, geography and marine disciplines. Our teaching team are leaders in their research fields and offer excellent links with environmental consultancies, industry, national and local government.

Key Features

• Access to a wide choice of modules taught by a core of environmental science staff and sustainability champions from across the University.
• Work with scientists, business, educators and engineers to help build a more sustainable future by exploring environmental challenges and proposing management solutions.
• Learn about the latest actions and renewable energy developments in the struggle against climate change.
• Take part in overseas expeditions to Malaysia or Malta to experience challenges and solutions to sustainable development.
• The opportunity to develop your employability via a placement year, leading to the University’s Certificate of Professional Practice, and opportunities to study abroad, through exchange programmes.
• Teaching and learning that focuses on fun interactive, experiential and participatory learning and authentic tasks that mimic professional practice.
• Be a part of a University with an international reputation for sustainability education, recognition as outstanding in the People and Planet Green League and Green Gown Awards.

Explore the ever-evolving world of literature and culture through an exciting array of thematic modules, spanning a broad range of periods from the early modern to the present. You benefit from staff expertise in the field, and their connections with wider research communities. Gain a deep understanding of literary studies and acquire advanced research skills applicable throughout your studies and beyond.

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 a qualified health and social care professional working in Neurological Rehabilitation? Do you want to develop advanced practitioner skills and knowledge along with a critical thinking ethos? Do you want to challenge your current practice and be innovative in applying your studies to your area of practice? This successful pathway is taught by an enthusiastic research active team who are specialists in neurological rehabilitation, and is endorsed by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.

Key Features

• Progress your health professions career and become a leader in this specialist area with a programme formed on evidence-based clinical practice, incorporating practical skill development*.
• Increase your skills in reflection, analysis and critical debate, as well as developing your knowledge base of this cutting-edge subject. The assignments for all modules are designed to help you link theory to practice.  
• Learn from research active teaching staff, with national and international reputations in this specialist area. You’ll be encouraged to join the faculty’s Rehabilitation research group, nested under the Institute of Health and Community, and will work with our experienced staff on your own research project.
• Further your research skills through use of the University’s highly advanced equipment at the Human Movement and Function Laboratory.
• Take the opportunity to choose specialist skills modules such as Injection Therapy for your continuing professional development (CPD).
• Make the most of our blended learning approach, which combines short study blocks and distance learning technologies with face-to-face teaching, enhancing the learning process by allowing time for reflection.
• Take advantage of flexible study – you can complete the programme over one year full time or two to five years part time. Your study will comprise of a mixture of lectures, practicals, seminars and tutorials. The full-time route is suitable for international students, who will be supported to choose optional modules with non-clinical assignments.
• Choose from three award pathways with full and part-time options: Postgraduate Certificate (PgCert), 60 credits; Postgraduate Diploma (PgDip), 120 credits; and Masters (MSc), 180 credits.
• This programme is accredited by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.

*As this programme is designed for qualified practitioners there is no requirement of a clinical placement component. Neither the programme nor any of its pathways lead to eligibility to apply for registration with a regulatory body.

Whether you want to be a financial forecaster, a researcher or even a future leader of industry, our lively and involving economics courses prepare you for success. Develop the ability to analyse economic information through theoretical and practical research-based modules, and gain essential analytical and numerical skills. We also offer a range of named economics courses with slightly different emphases aimed at those with firm career aspirations.

Key Features

• All of our named awards share a core syllabus, stressing the integration of theory and evidence in economic analysis and research.
• Engage with current and past students with our Economics Society, and hear talks from visiting academics and professionals.
• We are one of a small number of institutions with a modern computer suite containing dedicated Bloomberg terminals giving you access to financial data and information.
• Join the Devon Junior Chamber and receive training and professional mentoring.
• Apply your skills in a work environment and take our optional placement year.
• Think sustainably – in your final year you may choose to take modules covering environmental and resource economics, analysing the issue of environmental and resource scarcity and the possible policy responses to market failure.