Special Educational Needs, Disabilities and Inclusion BA (Hons)

Teaching and Learning

The University places emphasis on enabling students to develop the independent learning capabilities that will equip you for lifelong learning and future employment, as well as academic achievement.

A mixture of independent study, teaching and academic support through the personal academic tutoring system enables you to reflect on progress and build up a profile of skills, achievements and experiences that will enable you to flourish and be successful.

Teaching

You are taught through a combination of lectures, seminar, tutorials, guided study of current documentation including legal and policy frameworks, as well as input from visiting speakers. Each year some optional modules offer the opportunity for work-based learning in relevant settings. Multimedia presentations and use of virtual learning environment (VLE) will be utilised throughout.

Academic and personal support is available from Firstpoint. In addition, meetings with personal academic tutors are scheduled on at least 4 occasions in the first year and three occasions in each of the other years of a course. You also have an opportunity to discuss any issues that may be affecting your academic performance and discuss employability opportunities.

Contact time

In a typical week you will have around 12 - 16 contact hours of teaching. The precise contact hours will depend on the optional modules selected and in the final year you will normally have slightly less contact time in order to do more independent study.

Typically, class contact time will be structured around:

• Interactive lectures
• Workshops
• Seminars
• Tutorials
• Student led presentations
• Visits to educational and other relevant facilities
• Online activities

Independent self-study

In addition to the contact time, you are expected to undertake around 20-25 hours of personal self-study per week. Typically, this will involve pre-session activities, wider reading and directed study tasks, all of which will be outlined in the module materials.

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 be taught by a teaching team whose expertise and knowledge are closely matched to the content of the modules on the course. The team includes staff with expertise as teachers, senior leaders in education settings, early year’s practitioners, educational psychologists and school governors.

Teaching is informed by the research and consultancy, many course lecturers have a higher education teaching qualification or are Fellows of the Higher Education Academy. 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.

Assessments are varied and include: essays, presentations, evaluating resources, case-studies, and reports. Examples of assessment include: student led presentations, ICT based discussions and presentations, student reflective journals, independent research activity, individual and group presentations, poster presentations, research projects and portfolios.

The precise assessment requirements for an individual student in an academic year will vary according to the mandatory and optional modules taken, but a typical formal summative assessment pattern for each year of the course is:

Year 1: 1 x case study, 2 x resources, 2 x evaluations, 1 x presentation, 1 x report, 2 x reflective journals, 1 x portfolio.

Year 2: 1 x plan, 3 x reports, 1 x reflective log, 1 x portfolio, 1 x proposal, 1 x evaluation.

Year 3: 1 x presentation, 1 x report, 1 x reflective log, 1 x report, 1 x dissertation.

Feedback

You will receive feedback on practice assessments and on formal assessments undertaken by coursework. Feedback on examination performance is available upon request from the module leader. Feedback is intended to support learning and you are encouraged to discuss it with personal academic tutors and module tutors as appropriate.

We aim to provide 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.