Bachelor of Science in Business Computing (Social Media) with Placement (Thick - Sandwich)

at Brunel University London United Kingdom

Our Visual Effects and Motion Graphics BSc degree is a modern, hands-on course that combines digital technology and creative design. It has been developed to equip you with the knowledge and practical skills required by the visual effects and motion graphics sector within the entertainment and creative industries.

At Brunel, we combine a study of visual effects with motion graphics so you can learn a wide range of creative and technical skills required to produce high-quality visual assets and artefacts for film, TV, the Web, games and other creative outlets. You’ll study VFX acquisition, motion design, CGI, digital graphic design, digital photography and video. You will then progress to producing more complex post-production assets and artefacts involving compositing, advanced CGI, 3D animation, media aesthetics, motion graphics and mixed reality. In your final year, you can choose from modules in advanced digital graphics and motion design and advanced 3D animation with additional options in digital experiences and creative technology design.

Professional and transferable skills required for working in the creative digital industries are developed throughout each year of the course. 

Our modern, industry standard digital media facilities include a green screen and post-production studio, motion capture, sound and photography studios, 4K digital cinema cameras, and a dedicated render farm. You will have independent access to exclusive PC and Mac computing laboratories and benefit from the latest industry standard specialist software for graphics and image/video editing, 3D animation, digital compositing and high-quality asset creation. There's also the opportunity for you to use our immersive virtual environment laboratory. This includes an immersive dome (planetarium) set up for Brunel by the National Space Centre in Leicester, and is one of only a few in the UK! 

There are guest lectures covering lots of different digital media topics and the visiting lecturers provide industry insight and advice on how to structure your portfolio and showreels. Speakers include creative and design directors, motion graphics professionals, 3D graphic supervisors, and VFX specialists and generalists.

Visits are arranged to TV and photography studios, and post-production houses. There’s also the opportunity to go to conferences and this is your chance to build networks with key industry experts. In addition, you have the advantage of Brunel’s close location to London for trips to exhibitions celebrating the creative industries.

The course can be studied full-time over three years, or four years with a placement year. We encourage the placement year option. This time in industry helps you to further prepare for the world of work and you’ll have a year’s worth of invaluable professional experience when you graduate. If you decide to go on a digital media placement year, you will have the opportunity of working in the ever-growing creative industries.

The end-of-year highlight is the BrunelDigital degree show hosted on Brunel’s one London campus. Exhibiting your creative work at this event is a great way for you to connect with leading creative technologists and showcase your talent.

Brunel’s visual effects and motion graphics course is fully accredited and industry recognised by ScreenSkills, the industry-led skills body for the UK’s screen-based industries. It carries the ScreenSkills Select quality mark which indicates that it is best suited to prepare you for a career in the screen industries. An added benefit as a student on this ScreenSkills endorsed course, is that you're eligible to apply for a Royal Television Society (RTS) bursary.

The digital media courses at Brunel are the only ScreenSkills-accredited degree programmes in London and the South East.

Digital media and gaming applications are at the cutting edge of user experience technology. The Computer Science (Digital Media and Games) BSc is a flexible course that provides graduates with the knowledge and skills to design creatively and commercially.

This specialist degree course will help you understand the nature, diversity and limitations of software artefacts (programs) targeted at the entertainment market and apply your skills to implement and develop your own.

In addition, you’ll acquire in-depth knowledge of algorithms, design, programming and testing techniques. By the end of the course, you’ll have confidence in your knowledge of common system and network architectures and system development approaches, requirements capture, design methods, models, tools, and techniques.

You’ll become well-versed in implementing and testing systems and software maintenance. Key to this course is cultivating a reflective approach to project management issues arising from team-based software development.

All our degrees emphasise acquiring knowledge and skills to develop your new understanding creatively and professionally. Although this is an academic degree, the course balances theory with real-world practice in information and computer management.

Our course is designed for flexibility, so if you’re not sure which route you want to go, you can select modules and specialise gradually during your time with us. You can transfer between Computer Science and Business Computing up to the start of Level 2, then, should you wish, to choose a specialism up to the start of Level 3.

We know that when you graduate, you’ll be working on large projects. That’s why one third of each year of our programmes is project-based. On Levels 1 and 2, you’ll build a software solution in a team, and in your final year you’ll carry out an individual project. You’ll also have the opportunity to showcase your projects at the annual Made in Brunel (Software Innovation) event, with awards presented by the likes of Cisco, Sky and Xerox.

As part of your degree course, you’ll have the chance to take a year-long work placement between your second year and third year. We’ll support you in finding that all-important paid professional experience, in the UK or abroad. The feedback we’ve received is that those who have taken a placement are much more likely to find a job for which their degree was a formal requirement as it gives you a competitive advantage. Recent graduates have gone on to work for well-known names such as Accenture, Toshiba, Microsoft, British Airways, O2, and Barclays.

Our programmes are accredited by the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered IT Professional (CITP), and on behalf of the Engineering Council, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for Incorporated Engineer (IEng) and partially meeting the academic requirement for a Chartered Engineer (CEng). 

The accreditation also allows you to apply for professional membership of the BCS after you have successfully completed your degree.

The department has been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze, recognising our dedication to the advancement of gender equality in STEM subjects. We now have an ongoing three-year action plan to further implement strategies and improve our practices. As part of this endeavour, Brunel’s Women in Engineering and Computing mentoring scheme provides our female students with invaluable help and support from the industry.

The Education BA at Brunel offers you the opportunity to combine the study of education with professional practice to give you a pathway into a range of education professions and postgraduate professional study including teacher education.

Whether you are looking to explore education related fields – such as counselling, educational psychology, social services, local authority work, social work, administration and education management – or you already know you want to teach, Brunel’s Education BA will give you a strong foundation from which to build.

The course will equip you with a broad and balanced view of educational theory, policy and practice within a range of educational contexts. You will also have numerous opportunities to develop a range of transferable skills such as critical reflection, systematic analysis, communication, collaboration, presentation and writing skills.

When it comes to professional practice, the Education BA includes three integrated work placements to give you the opportunity to explore different educational settings. To help you manage your time, you can do your placement experience weekly or in a block over the holidays.

If it’s teaching experience you’re seeking, Brunel’s network of partner schools is diverse and well-established which means you can gain highly valued teaching experience in vibrant multi-cultural schools where you will be fully supported by a work placement mentor as well as a Brunel tutor.

Take your knowledge of culture and society to the next level and equip yourself with a big range of practical and analytical skills for a changing world with our Anthropology and Sociology BSc.

Anthropology is concerned with contemporary issues such as multiculturalism, identity politics, racism and ethnic nationalism, changing forms of the family, religious conflict, gender, and the political role of culture. It also addresses fundamental questions about human nature, such as: ‘What do we have in common with each other cross-culturally?’ and ‘What makes us different?’

Sociology, its sister subject, looks at the foundations of social life and the big issues in contemporary society such as inequality, racism, globalisation, and migration.

In particular, your sociology studies at Brunel will be closely related to the central and ever-increasing importance of the communications media in our culture, for example, how poverty is portrayed and the powerful influence of celebrity.

Brunel is a great choice for this combined study with lecturers from both subjects producing cutting edge research alongside their teaching, on both global issues and local problems.

This research expertise filters down into what you will learn. In anthropology students have learnt about youth and motorcycles in Rwanda, and in sociology, about cosmetic tourism.

Choose this course and you can do fieldwork on any subject, anywhere in the world, whether it’s learning about refugees in Athens or mother and toddler groups in inner London.

Around half of Brunel anthropology students carry out a placement or fieldwork abroad, in places as wide ranging as India, Nepal, Australia, South Africa, Papua New Guinea and Jamaica.

Recent UK placement destinations include the Royal Anthropological Institute, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Amnesty International and the Department of Health.

Alternatively, could choose a placement that’s more sociologically focussed. Either way, you can choose to take it as two six month placements or one year-long placement.

Take advantage of real-life work experience to gain a competitive advantage on your anthropology degree.

• You have the option to undertake two six-month placements, or a year-long placement whilst studying one of our anthropology degrees.
• If you opt to go on two six-month work placements, then you can use the first one to help determine an area of interest to you in the future. You have the freedom of choice when looking for placements and can be based locally for one and go abroad for the second one.
• You’ll have support from day one of your anthropology course from your personal tutors and the Professional Development Centre in finding a suitable work placement according to your interests. They can range from working in a church, in a museum to supporting charities on-sites and studying a local community within a village.
• This invaluable experience will not only build your confidence but also provide you with a platform to showcase your project management, organisational and creative skills in the workplace.
• Some of our students have completed their placements in Guatemala, London, Malaysia and Morocco which really gives a global perspective.
• Fieldwork can also be conducted as volunteering to give you a real insight into cultures and communities. For example, one of our students did charity work in Cambodia and enjoyed experiencing different cultures and working with a range of people from different backgrounds.

By specialising in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), you will learn how to understand the user experience (UX), and to use the insights you gain to help build systems that better meet the user’s needs. Through a mixture of theory and real-world practice, you’ll learn how to assess organisational problems and apply solutions. We’ll teach you how to determine a dynamic mix of processes, which allow information delivery systems and users to carry out business effectively and efficiently. You’ll come to intuitively understand how an organisation’s information systems need to adapt to the changes and developments natural to growth and progress.

Featured modules include software development and management, usability engineering and process modelling, e-business, and social media. Other Web 2.0 technologies and simulation modelling also feature.

Our course is designed for flexibility, so if you’re not sure which route you want to go down, you can select modules and specialise gradually during your time with us. You can transfer between Computer Science and Business Computing up to the start of Level 2, then should you wish, you can choose a specialism up to the start of Level 3.

We know that when you graduate, you’ll be working on large projects. That’s why one third of each year of our programmes is project-based. On Levels 1 and 2, you’ll build a software solution in a team, and in your final year you’ll carry out an individual project. You’ll also have the opportunity to showcase your projects at the annual Made in Brunel (Software Innovation) event, with awards presented by the likes of Cisco, Sky and Xerox.

As part of your degree course, you’ll have the chance to take a year-long work placement between your second year and third year. We’ll support you in finding that all-important paid professional experience, in the UK or abroad. The feedback we’ve received is that those who have taken a placement are much more likely to find a job for which their degree was a formal requirement as it gives you a competitive advantage. Recent graduates have gone on to work for well-known names such as Accenture, Toshiba, Microsoft, British Airways, O2, and Barclays.

Our programmes are accredited by the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered IT Professional (CITP). The accreditation also allows you to apply for professional membership of the BCS after you have successfully completed your degree

The department has been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze, recognising our dedication to the advancement of gender equality in STEM subjects. We now have an ongoing three-year action plan to further implement strategies and improve our practices. As part of this endeavour, Brunel’s Women in Engineering and Computing mentoring scheme provides our female students with invaluable help and support from the industry.

Opt for a one-year work placement while you study to gain real-world technical and soft skills which will set you apart from the competition after you graduate from your Computer Science degree.

• All of our undergraduate computing courses come with the option of undertaking a year’s placement out in the industry. This means that you have the opportunity to experience a real working environment and develop your softer skills like presenting, negotiating and working to a specific brief and tight deadlines.
• A dedicated placement tutor from the Professional Development Centre will work with you to help secure your work placement, which could be in market, product or research development areas. Previous students have taken their placement year in companies such as Microsoft, BMW, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, and Xerox.

The Brunel Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences (Physical Education, Coaching and Social Issues) BSc is for students who are interested in working in physical education or youth sport, developing sport in communities, helping individuals fulfil their potential in sport and health, as well as those seeking to gain a strong understanding and application of sports coaching principles and practices.

You'll explore the sociological, political, pedagogical and psychological factors that influence participation in physical education and sport, and how these relate to sports performance, physical activity, health and wellbeing. You'll learn how to plan, deliver, manage and evaluate high-quality activities and events aimed at encouraging and enabling people to get involved in sport and physical activity, from grassroots to elite level.

You’ll also explore social issues in physical education such as gender, race and religion and inclusive practice. In addition, you'll learn historical and philosophical aspects related to PE.

Your studies will be supported by some of the best teaching and sports facilities in the UK that include our:

• State-of-the-art physiology, biomechanics and psychology laboratories
• World-class indoor athletics centre
• International-standard 400m six-lane athletics track with full field event facilities
• Large indoor netball hall
• Multi-use sports centre equipped with squash, basketball and netball courts, as well as a superb climbing wall.
• Members-only fitness suite featuring treadmills, cycles and rowing machines
• A weight-training area with free and fixed weights
• Grass and third-generation (3G) all-weather pitches
• Outdoor tennis courts

You'll also have the opportunity to carry out a placement as part of your degree. This will give you the type of experience that will enable you to create a standout CV. Our Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences (Physical Education, Coaching and Social Issues) BSc offers two placement options: you can choose to carry out two placements during the summer vacations within the three year degree, or a one year placement between years two and three, as part of a four year degree.

Learn what role the media plays in shaping our society and influencing peoples’ thoughts and behaviours by studying our exciting Sociology (Media) BSc.  

By adding media studies to your study of sociology, you’ll be able to explore and specialise in areas such as the social impact of new media, the internet and other information and communications technologies, media discourse, media policy and regulation.

The first year is designed to offer you a solid base in theoretical and methodological innovations in sociology and media. You will explore the similarities and differences in the methodologies used in sociology, media, and communications. The focus of study is upon all aspects of societal relations: it’s personal, social and cultural dimensions.

As you progress through the course, you will be able to choose modules you are interested in to actively shape and apply your learning to the issues you wish to interrogate. In your third year, you’ll work on a dissertation focusing on an area of interest of your choice. Your dissertation can be a theoretical or practical dissertation, so you can work to your own strengths.

Depending on the modules you choose, you may have the option go on fieldtrips where you will be able to apply your learning to current issues and broaden your theoretical imagination. Previous fieldtrips have included: Barbican; British Board of Film Classification; London Migration Museum; Museum of Comedy; Museum of London; regeneration areas (e.g. Spitalfields, Smithfield); and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

As you’ll be taught and supported by academics who are not only experts in their field but are actively engaged in research, you’ll develop skills that can be applied from the classroom to the workplace. They know the industry inside out, so you know you are learning from experienced professionals who will bring their unique insights into the classroom and will ensure your learning is up-to-date.

Gain an insight into life after your studies by putting your learning into practice by opting for a one-year work placement or two short placements for six months at a time. You will graduate with valuable work experience to enhance your employment prospects and will be able to develop an understanding the working world. We have excellent links with a wide range of notable external organisations, so you will have the opportunity to apply for high quality placements across London.

Some of our sociology and media students have undertaken placements in a variety of companies including the political research unit at the Conservative Party Campaign HQ, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Prince’s Trust, the Crime Statistics Unit at the Home Office, Citizens Advice Bureau and the Department of Work and Pensions.

This is a broad-based degree which will enable and encourage you to specialise in areas which particularly fascinate you. As a graduate of this dynamic degree, you will leave us with various transferable skills that are key to the contemporary employment market. 

From social networks, ecommerce and government through to sensors, smart meters and mobile networks, data is being collected at an unprecedented speed and scale. But big data is of little use without 'big insight'. The skills required to develop such insight are in short supply and the shortage of skilled workers in the data analytics market is cited as a key barrier to unlocking everything that data has to offer.

The Data Science and Analytics MSc programme provides these skills, combining a strong academic degree course with hands-on experience of leading commercial technology, and the chance to gain industry certification. You will develop both your critical awareness of the very latest developments in data science and the practical skills that help you apply data science more effectively in a wide variety of sectors including finance, retail and government.

You’ll gain knowledge of key concepts and the nuances of effective data analysis. You’ll gain confidence in your own critical understanding of the challenges and issues arising from taking heterogeneous data at volume and scale, understanding what it represents, and turning that understanding into insight for business, scientific or social innovation. You’ll develop a practical understanding of the skills, tools and techniques necessary for the effective application of data science.

The course is designed to offer you the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in several data analytics tools (e.g. Hadoop, Spark, Tableau), programming languages (R, Python) and machine learning libraries.

A series of sessions in Python is offered to support students who are less familiar with programming.

You will also have the opportunity to obtain an SAS certificate such as SAS Base Programming, which is a recognised industry qualification, following a two-week SAS certification ‘boot camp’.

If you don’t want to commit to full or part-time study of the entire MSc, you can develop your educational portfolio over a longer period of time by undertaking staged study that leads to the award of Postgraduate Certi?cate (PGCert in Data Science), Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip in Data Science and Analytics) and Data Science and Analytics MSc in separate stages.

The roles that our graduates are typically recruited to within these organisations include analytics consultant, big data engineer/scientist, business analyst, clinical data scientist, data design specialist, data scientists, developer/development engineer, enterprise/technical architect, forecast analyst, marketing/customer and/or insight analyst, quantitative analyst and web analyst.

Brunel’s Women in Engineering and Computing mentoring scheme provides our female students with invaluable help and support from their industry mentors.

Anthropology of Childhood, Youth and Education MSc was the first degree of its kind to be established and is still unique in its deep anthropological exploration on what it is to be a child or to be young.

As part of the course, you will look at historic perceptions of childhood in the West to the development of European rights of protection, compared to experiences of childhood in other parts of the world, like the street children of Brazil.

In a module on learning and education you will compare physical development stages, including how learning is acquired and universal patterns of play, to the range of ways children are prepared or educated to fit cultural expectations.

The course’s key organising principle is that understanding children requires the study of how their relations with others – peers, older and younger children, parents, teachers and other adults – inform their practices, identities and world views.

The course addresses the following issues from an anthropological perspective:-

• Do children of ‘different cultures’ live ‘different worlds’?
• How does education impact upon children’s worlds and upon social and cultural practices more broadly?
• How do the everyday processes of learning – both formal and informal – help to shape children’s ideas of and engagement with society at large?
• What is the role of schools in the transmission and acquisition of cultural values to children and youth?
• Why are adults’ ideas about childhood and youth so important for what children learn and aspire to become?

The distinctiveness of this degree derives from an anthropological approach that focuses on the importance of children’s and youth’s perspectives, on the role that education (formal and informal) plays in children’s learning processes, and in the transmission and acquisition of cultural knowledge.

Anthropology at Brunel is well-known for its focus on ethnographic fieldwork. As well as undertaking rigorous intellectual training, you will be expected to get out of the library and undertake your own, original research – whether in the UK or overseas – and to present your findings in a dissertation.

In recent years, Brunel students have undertaken fieldwork in locations across the world, including India, Mexico, Bolivia, Papua New Guinea, China, Nepal, Peru, Morocco, and New Zealand as well as within the UK and the rest of Europe.

As the amount of digital information increases, major institutions in sectors such as finance and medicine rely on robust structures that can grow and adapt. By specialising in software engineering, you’ll focus on how to build high quality systems which will be easier to maintain and develop as the requirements of the system change and available technologies evolve. The techniques involved include testing, service-oriented architectures, and refactoring.

On the Computer Science (Software Engineering) BSc degree course, you’ll also learn how to build different types of software, from web-based systems to mobile solutions. In the final year you’ll take compulsory modules in advanced computer science and choose optional modules that interest you in a variety of compelling areas.

In addition, you’ll acquire in-depth knowledge of algorithms, design, programming and testing techniques. By the end of the course, you’ll have confidence in your knowledge of common system and network architectures and system development approaches, requirements capture, design methods, models, tools, and techniques.

You’ll become well-versed in implementing and testing systems and software maintenance. Key to this course is cultivating a reflective approach to project management issues arising from team-based software development.

This specialist degree course allows you to display an in-depth knowledge of the management, organisation and execution of large-scale software design and development activities including reuse and integration. All our degrees emphasise acquiring knowledge and skills to develop your new understanding creatively and professionally. Although this is an academic degree, the course balances theory with real-world practice in information and computer management.

Our course is designed for flexibility, so if you’re not sure which route you want to go, you can select modules and specialise gradually during your time with us. You can transfer between Computer Science and Business Computing up to the start of Level 2, then, should you wish, to choose a specialism up to the start of Level 3.

We know that when you graduate, you’ll be working on large projects. That’s why one third of each year of our programmes is project-based. On Levels 1 and 2, you’ll build a software solution in a team, and in your final year you’ll carry out an individual project. You’ll also have the opportunity to showcase your projects at the annual  Made in Brunel (Software Innovation) event, with awards presented by the likes of Cisco, Sky and Xerox.

As part of your degree course, you’ll have the chance to take a year-long work placement between your second year and third year. We’ll support you in finding that all-important paid professional experience, in the UK or abroad. The feedback we’ve received is that those who have taken a placement are much more likely to find a job for which their degree was a formal requirement as it gives you a competitive advantage. Recent graduates have gone on to work for well-known names such as Accenture, Toshiba, Microsoft, British Airways, O2, and Barclays.

Our programmes are accredited by the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered IT Professional (CITP), and on behalf of the Engineering Council, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for Incorporated Engineer (IEng) and partially meeting the academic requirement for a Chartered Engineer (CEng). 

The accreditation also allows you to apply for professional membership of the BCS after you have successfully completed your degree.

The department has been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze, recognising our dedication to the advancement of gender equality in STEM subjects. We now have an ongoing three-year action plan to further implement strategies and improve our practices. As part of this endeavour, Brunel’s  Women in Engineering and Computing mentoring scheme provides our female students with invaluable help and support from the industry.