Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Virtual Reality Design (Optional Placement)

at University of Plymouth United Kingdom

Create truly unforgettable events. Our hands-on degree – developed with industry – gives you the insight, know-how and skills to become a critical, creative events professional. Study on a course where our students gave us a 95% satisfaction rate in the 2018 National Student Survey. Collaborate with a range of UK event companies – so you’re ready to impact the way events are produced and managed in the future.

Key Features

• Plan and deliver real, live events – including conferences, high-end banqueting, exhibitions and trade fairs. You’ll bid for the opportunity to manage your preferred event, and learn collaboration skills by working with your course mates on the delivery of all staged events.
• Be inspired by extra-curricular activity that helps you become a well-rounded events professional. Take part in team-building activities at Skern Lodge in Devon. Learn from guest speakers and attend event conferences. You’ll have the chance to acquire industry-related professional qualifications too.
• Expand your horizons with our international fieldwork. Build confidence, understand different cultures and get to grips with industry standards. In the past our students have visited event venues in Prague, attended a bespoke training session at Disneyland Paris and explored Amsterdam at night through a series of free events across the city.
• Lay strong foundations for a successful career using our extensive industry links to secure a one-year work placement in the UK or abroad. Gain vital industry experience – students have worked at international exhibitions, organised Christmas parties for over 900 guests, and taken part in marketing activities and corporate team building.
• Learn from the best – our teaching staff are all actively engaged in the research of industry leadership, employer needs, planning, communication, event innovation, evaluation and other management issues.
• Create a portfolio before you even graduate. Assessments are linked to real clients throughout the course, and you’ll have the chance to develop professional materials and presentations to explain your ideas. In previous years, clients have used winning ideas in their business operations.
• Future-proof your career and benefit from a course that views sustainability as a crucial factor in the events industry. You’ll examine the social, economic, political, cultural and environmental dimensions related to the issue of sustainability. 
• Seize the opportunity to learn a foreign language.
• Empower yourself with our unique course. Challenge normal thinking. Ask the difficult questions. Take the long view and become an advocate for better business practice. 
• In the 2019 National Student Survey, 91% of students were satisfied overall and 94% of graduates felt staff were good at explaining things.*

Geography explores the relationships between people, places and the environment. Our diverse degree has a strong emphasis on applied skills and career development. You can choose to specialise or maintain a broad range of interests, and an optional placement year offers work experience. You learn from expert, accessible, supportive staff who are skilled researchers in their field. Plymouth is the ideal setting as a vibrant urban environment surrounded by iconic rural and coastal landscapes.

Our geography degrees make the most of geography’s strengths in tackling head on the biggest global challenges we face. Modules have been designed to address many of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals – developed by the UN as the 'blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all' – all of our degrees are fully accredited by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).

Key Features

• Our newly designed curriculum places sustainability challenges at the centre, with modules designed to help address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
• Choose from a range of physical and/or human geography choice modules so that you determine your degree pathway.
• Our supportive staff are expert researchers and many are world leaders in their field.
• Teaching is innovative and student-centred. You will learn through lectures, seminars, practicals, national and international residential fieldwork, tutorials and one-to-one dissertation support.
• Learn to use Geographical Information Systems to analyse and communicate complex spatial data.
• Take the opportunity to spend your second year studying abroad in Europe, Canada, Australia, USA or elsewhere through our bilateral and ISEP exchange programmes.
• Study on a course designed with a focus on employability and applied geography, supporting a range of career opportunities such as environmental consultancy, conservation and biogeography, earth science and hazard management, expedition work, and catchment management.
• Experience a valuable work placement programme, opening up a range of career opportunities.
• LABplus is a unique open access laboratory and resource centre designed for students studying science and engineering courses. The lab provides a flexible workspace, computing facilities, specialist software, access to microscopes, microscope cameras and bespoke resources.
• Benefit from our unique location, in the heart of the historical city of Plymouth, bordered by Dartmoor National Park as well as the Tamar Valley and South Hams Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Devon and Cornwall have glorious beaches, coasts, rivers and estuaries.Choose from a range of human, physical and environmental geography modules – our stimulating programme of geographical studies includes theory and practical elements.

Our interior design course focuses on how design responds to the surrounding environment. We explore design interventions in existing buildings and neglected spaces with a hands-on approach to crafting their interiors. We study the space between object and architecture and promote an adaptive re-use approach to shaping the world around us with human, social, economic and environmental sustainability embedded in our process.

Key Features

• Teaching is in small groups with the studio culture run like a design practice with innovative delivery including flipped classroom, podcasts and team teaching.
• Work alongside students from our Product and Furniture Design course in our vibrant studio with individual desk space and CAD stations.
• You’ll build up a portfolio with fresh projects starting every few weeks. Assessments are 100% coursework – so no exams.
• Culture trips to Europe and study exchanges in Japan, USA, India or Italy are also possible.
• Engage with real clients with live projects. We’ve recently run projects with Vitra, John Lewis, Red Paddle, UPP, architects Willmore Iles and Herman Millar.
• Gain valuable industry experience through our competitions, studio visits, visiting lecturers and our meet the supplier visits.
• BA (Hons) Interior Design: is professionally accredited by the Chartered Society of Designers.

This versatile and dynamic primary education degree with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) is the ideal preparation for a successful and rewarding career in primary teaching, enabling you to embark on your teaching career straight after finishing your studies. Building on long established partnerships, you will have ample opportunities to learn with experienced practitioners. From the start of the course you will work in a range of schools gradually building up confidence and expertise.

Have you considered

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

Key Features

• Skills and subject knowledge: this carefully structured course will provide you with the skills and subject knowledge required to teach all the National Curriculum subjects through working with experienced and passionate tutors in interactive and practical teaching sessions.
• Subject focus area: you’ll also be given the chance to select a curriculum area to focus upon in years two and three and link this subject to your final-year research dissertation. The comprehensive primary programme ensures you are well-equipped to teach across the curriculum, but also offer additional skills in a chosen subject area, thereby enhancing your employability
• Curriculum focus areas: final qualification can have a curriculum focus linked. Current subjects offered are Mathematics, English, Science, Music, Art and Design, Geography, History, MFL, Religious Education, Physical Education, Computing, Design & Technology
• 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.

Are you fascinated by the designs of large coastal structures such as seawalls and breakwaters and how these withstand attack by the sea? Do you want to help protect our coastal communities from the threat of flooding and sea level rise? Do you want to understand how to plan and construct a port? Our MEng graduates in civil and coastal engineering are trained as civil engineers with specialist knowledge in the realisation of projects that are essential to the functioning of coastal societies.

This accredited MEng provides the further learning component required for Chartered Engineer status. You will be supported and inspired by our enthusiastic academic staff. They will encourage you to enhance your professional experience through attendance at meetings and seminars, and the option of a paid year in industry with a civil engineering employer. You will also be offered a mentor from our network of Plymouth Civil Engineers to help guide you at the start of your professional career.

Have you considered

• BEng (Hons) Civil Engineering
• MEng (Hons) Civil Engineering
• BEng (Hons) Civil and Coastal Engineering
• BEng (Hons) Civil Engineering with Foundation Year

Key Features

In a world ever-increasingly in flux – economically, environmentally, socio-culturally – there’s an ever greater need for architects able to think creatively, critically and strategically. You’ll be supported in a design and research-led critical inquiry, testing your work in the public domain through live projects in the UK and overseas. You will develop your own sense of praxis, while exploring the potential of architecture to generate more sustainable, inclusive and resilient places.

Our course is fully validated by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and prescribed by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) to the requirements at Part 2 level. Within six months of degree completion, 100 per cent of our graduates have found professional employment in the UK, Europe and Asia* – with award-winning architects such as AHMM, Allies and Morrison, Feilden Clegg Bradley, Hopkins, John McAslan, Keith Williams, Make, Nicholas Hare and Walters and Cohen.

Key Features

• Our school was described as ‘charged’ by The Architects’ Journal.
• Get creative with our amazing facilities and resources. You’ll be based in our eye-catching Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business building in the heart of the campus, surrounded by students and staff from other art courses. And, you’ll have two square metres of desk to call your own.
• Study a programme fully validated by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and prescribed by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) – with National Student Survey results for the M Arch (not including BA Architecture) for the past two years at 100 per cent for overall student satisfaction.
• Interact with the public domain with architecture that’s responsive to people, places and tectonics. Work with local communities and institutions, including city councils, business organisations and non-governmental organisations.
• Work on live studio-based projects, both in the UK and abroad. Previous projects have been based in China, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the UK.
• Over 95 per cent of our recent graduates have found work in the UK, the Middle East and Asia.
• Benefit from our future-facing programme that features a strong socio-cultural, urban and sustainability dimension. 
• Learn from tutors with industry experience and interdisciplinary research interests.

This one year MA Architectural Design program explores architecture, design and urbanism, with an emphasis on the critical investigation of space through practical, theoretical research interests and creative activities. Design is the crucial agency for exploring spatial creativity, coupled with an experimental design practice that operates from a core architectural discipline, yet celebrates the blurring of disciplinary boundaries to forge innovation and new disciplines in spatial enquiry.

You will undertake architectural design studio projects that immerse you within spatial debates and cross-disciplinary activities, including working on live projects, community engagement and public events. Supporting your work in the design studio, you will engage with emerging research in architecture, connecting sustainable practices and integrated technology. You will generate a dissertation through detailed design development of a selected aspect of your design studio work. Support is provided in the design studio through weekly tutorials, workshops and seminars. All students will be encouraged to develop a personal and critical path of design discovery. The studio culture fosters a unique design-led research practice, converging theory, design and technology.

Key features

• Encouraging discovery and critical development in a studio-based culture that fosters a unique research-led practice, converging theory, practice and technology.
• Co-taught with the RIBA-validated Part II programme, sharing coursework, projects and studio space.
• Advances the understanding of the role architectural design plays in today’s most pressing societal, environmental and cultural challenges.
• Encompasses a wide range of skills, theory and practice from urban situation to building performance.
• Develops the capacity to conceptualise spatial thought in relation to architectural design and production at all levels of design, fabrication and use.
• Framed by issues of place, people, tectonics and environmental concerns

Our industry-recognised BSc (Hons) Quantity Surveying course will help you develop knowledge and skills in the commercial and financial management of construction projects. Through lectures, tutorials with industry partners, real assessments and projects briefs, and an optional year-long paid industry placement, you will learn the requirements for managing risk and proving value for a variety of clients, taking into account sustainable and ethical dimensions.

Key Features

• Our course is fully accredited by the leading professional bodies: the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE).
• This course is designed around a common first year with BSc (Hons) Building Surveying and BSc (Hons) Construction Project Management, allowing you to transfer to these courses after successful completion of Year 1.
• You will gain valuable experience with an optional, paid year-long placement in a leading surveying company in the UK or abroad. Our industry links will help you find a placement, boosting your studies with practical experience and providing the contacts that can lead to future employment.
• You will be part of a vibrant multidisciplinary learning environment, working with students from other built environment disciplines, including construction project managers, architectural engineers and building surveyors.
• You will have access to a wide range of industry standard facilities, resources and equipment, including, a designated design studio space, specialist laboratories and workshops, Mac and PC suites, a 360 degree immersive vision theatre.
• Each year the quantity surveying knowledge and skills you develop come together in a real-world design and build project with an actual client and project brief. Guided by our panel of industrial advisers, you will develop the professional skills to stand out in the sector.
• Learn from leaders in their fields. Our staff come from both industry and research backgrounds. Industry professionals also play an active role in the course participating in guest lectures, workshops and tutorials.
• Our built environment courses have been running for over 25 years.

Do you want to design large structures or be involved in projects that have great benefit to societies around the world? This accredited 4 year MEng course provides all the further learning required for you to proceed towards becoming a Chartered Civil Engineer. Our Plymouth Civil Engineers imagine, design and create the structures and technical approaches that provide shelter, clean water, sanitation, transportation, energy security and protection from natural hazards.

You will learn how to communicate effectively, manage projects and work in professional teams. You may choose to take a paid year in industry with a civil engineering employer and can further boost your professional development by attending specialist seminars and talks. We can also offer you a mentor drawn from our network of engineering professionals. The final year develops your advanced understanding of core civil engineering disciplines and finishes with an integrating design project.

Have you considered

• BEng (Hons) Civil Engineering
• MEng (Hons) Civil and Coastal Engineering
• BEng (Hons) Civil and Coastal Engineering
• BEng (Hons) Civil Engineering with Foundation Year

Key Features

Whether you are interested in mechatronics, artificial intelligence or the possibilities for biosensors, the BEng Robotics will encourage you to push your limits. Our emphasis on high level robotics, including mobile and humanoid automation, and our focus on the electronics and hardware that support industrial and service robotics is complemented by the hands-on approach you'll develop in our specialist laboratories.

You will work in a world-class research environment with staff internationally renowned for conducting cutting-edge service and cognitive robotics research. You will take part in robotics competitions offering invaluable opportunities for exciting and highly formative, practical sessions of intense study. You’ll capitalise on the opportunity to take a work placement in your third year, putting your robotics skills into action in the real world.

Have you considered

• MEng (Hons) Robotics
• BEng (Hons) Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Key Features

• 100% of our graduates said the course was intellectually stimulating in the 2019 National Student Survey. No doubt because from the day you join us until the day you graduate you’ll be testing and applying everything you learn in our fantastic labs.*
• Our robotics courses have a large number of laboratory practical sessions embedded in their modules, and this is a strong feature of the robotics teaching in Plymouth. This ensures that you can consolidate theory learned in lectures using real practical tasks, making your understanding of topics much more concrete.
• Develop in a broad range of subjects ranging from analogue and digital electronics to software programming and artificial intelligence, all in the context of robotics. 
• Advance your knowledge of electronics, microprocessors, and embedded systems forming the technological core of the course. This is supported by a thorough understanding of robotics concepts, such as control theory, sensors and motors. 
• Learn by doing in our high specification electronics, communications and robotics laboratories.
• Work in a world-class research environment with staff internationally renowned for conducting cutting-edge service and cognitive robotics research.
• Take part in robot football and other robotics competitions offering invaluable opportunities for exciting and highly formative, practical sessions of intense study. 
• Benefit from individual and group projects offering the possibility for you to consolidate your robotics knowledge by building and programming a variety of robots including small wheeled robots, industrial robots and humanoids.
• Draw on unique opportunities to engage in world-class robotics research, and in a variety of activities (for example, in the humanoid robot football, Federation of International Robot-soccer Association (FIRA) competition).
• Capitalise on the opportunity to take a work placement in your third year, putting your robotics skills into action in the real world.
• Join our Robotics Society and take the opportunity to assist robot development for international competitions such as the Robocup humanoid football league and robot athletics. 
• Immerse yourself in a degree accredited by the Institution for Engineering and Technology (IET), and meet the educational requirements for becoming a Chartered Engineer (CEng).
• Benefit from free IET membership while you are on the course.
• Work alongside internationally-renowned staff in a leading service and cognitive robotics research environment.
• 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.