Social Work MA

Teaching

you are taught through a combination of interactive lectures, seminars, practical sessions, and work-based learning.  

In addition, postgraduate you will have a minimum of two meetings each academic year with your Personal Academic Tutors, timed to coincide with key points such as induction or assessment.  

The University places emphasis on enabling you to develop the independent learning capabilities that will equip them for lifelong learning and future employment, as well as academic achievement.  A mixture of independent study, teaching and academic support from Student Services and Library Services, and also the Personal Academic Tutoring system enables students to reflect on progress and build up a profile of skills, achievements and experiences that will help you flourish and be successful.  

Contact time

In a typical week you will have around 9 contact hours of teaching, which will include a mix of lecturing activities as well as seminar activities.

During the practice placements as well as in the final year there is less contact time in order to allow students to focus more on independent study. Both placements take place over the summer months.

Typically class contact time will be structured around:

• Lectures
• Groupwork  
• Experiential learning including skills simulations.
• Some online sessions which develop students’ digital capability
• During the practice placement, around placement meetings and recall days
• During dissertation, through group and individual tutorials  

 Time spent on each activity will vary widely by week and semester and therefore the breakdown of hours for a typical week is not possible to provide. However, as an indication, lectures are likely to make up between 4 and 6 hours in a typical week. 

Independent self-study

In addition to the contact time, you are expected to undertake around 30 hours of personal self-study per week. Typically, this will involve reading, literature searching, directed study activities via Blackboard, online discussions and preparation for assessment.

Independent learning is supported by a range of excellent learning facilities, including the Hive and library resources, the virtual learning environment, and extensive electronic learning resources.

Teaching staff

You will receive teaching from a teaching team whose expertise and knowledge are matched closely to the content of the modules on the course. The team includes senior social work academics with practice expertise from a range of practice contexts in the statutory and voluntary sectors, experienced practitioners from our partner social work agencies and service users and carers from the University IMPACT group, who have a wide range of experience of using social work and social care services.

A range of contemporary social work research and development activity informs the team's teaching. In addition, 90 per cent of course lecturers are Fellows of the Higher Education Academy and hold a higher education teaching qualification. You can learn more about the staff by visiting our staff profiles.

Assessment

The course provides opportunities to test understanding and learning informally through the completion of practice or ‘formative’ assignments.  Each module has one or more formal or ‘summative’ assessments which are graded and count towards the overall module grade.    

Assessment methods include essays, reports, e-portfolios, and oral presentations. The e-portfolio for SOWK4111 includes an assessment of the students reflective writing, communication skills via an assessed simulation, an observation report, recording on an electronic database, digital professionalism. 

Feedback

You will receive feedback on practice assessments and on formal assessments undertaken by coursework. Feedback is intended to support learning and you are encouraged to discuss it with personal academic tutors and module tutors as appropriate.

We commit to providing you with feedback on formal course work assessments within 20 working days of hand-in.

Programme specification

For comprehensive details on the aims and intended learning outcomes of the course, and the means by which these are achieved through learning, teaching and assessment, please download the latest programme specification document.