Business Information Technology with a Foundation Year - BSc (Hons)

This first-year project allows you to develop and cultivate a creative mind-set through collaborative innovative practice, allowing you to bring together knowledge and imagination to construct a viable product. It is an opportunity to express your ideas, skills and talent to the wider community of innovative practice.

The project provides you with an opportunity to be part of a thriving community of innovators that practices connected learning. This is facilitated by putting you into inter-disciplinary project teams supported by innovation mentors, advisers and academics; culminating in you exhibiting your work to an international panel of experts.

This module focuses on the challenge, what are the information needs of organisations that information technology needs to support in the changing international business context? Information technology (IT) is ubiquitous in organisations capturing, creating and communicating data between internal business systems and enabling global communication between external parties such as suppliers and customers.

The module starts by focusing on two fundamental questions that underpin IT: What is information? And Why do organisations need information? The specific information that an organisation needs is then explored in this module together with the source and characteristics of the data needed to provide the information identified. Structured approaches to analysing and designing information systems are outlined, introducing different ways of modelling and communicating the business information needs.

The shift in operating conditions and the ever-changing business environments has led many organisations to adopt Enterprise Systems (ES) as a mechanism to gain competitive advantage, improve productivity, and facilitate real-time decision-making.

The primary objective of implementing these systems was to address the maintenance issues of legacy systems, reduce development risk, provide timely access to information, and improve business efficiency. However, there are a number of instances, where organisations have failed to realise these benefits and end up running into costly implementation, increased maintenance, and operational challenges. This module will develop your core skills and knowledge to support organisations in the management of ES and redesigning of the business processes...

In this module will you will focus on combining theoretical concepts around user experience design with practical “hands-on” approaches widely used in industry and academia to create effective interactive experiences. Current technology developments involve humans using information centred applications, both physically and cognitively. With the advent of ubiquitous computing and connected products, digitalisation has enabled information architectures that are not solely focused in software based applications, but also in tangible computing devices. In this context, you will learn about the user-centred design process that places a core emphasis on designing products and applications for “people”. In particular, you will learn techniques for gathering and understanding a target audience’s requirements, the importance of universal design and accessibility, methods for undertaking rapid prototyping, core principles around aesthetics and visual design, and a range of techniques for designing, running, and analysing user evaluations.

This module is designed to provide you with the opportunity to undertake a credit bearing, 40-week Professional Placement as an integral part of your Undergraduate Degree.

The purpose of the Professional Placement is to improve your employability skills which will, through the placement experience, allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviours at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market. Furthermore, by completing the Professional Placement, you will be able to develop and enhance your understanding of the professional work environment, relevant to your chosen field of study, and reflect critically on your own professional skills development within the workplace.

This module enables you to gain an understanding of the processes, scope and role when providing guidance or advice in a professional consulting capacity. It will also assist you if you join a larger organisation with the aspiration to become a leader and manager. The module provides awareness on the wider consulting profession and practice, the consulting role in computing and the management of client relationships. The focus will be to analyse and evaluate the frameworks, processes and techniques applied by computing consultants, managers and leaders.

This module focuses on the challenge, how can information systems align with business strategies to enable organisations to successfully sustain and develop their positions in the global digital economy? Information, information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) are valuable organisational resources that must be effectively managed to help the organisation achieve its objectives.

Strategic alignment directs the development of IS and the deployment of IT to provide continued support to the attainment of business objectives. This module explores how to formulate a robust IS strategy that enables an organisation to harness the value of its information resource to support attainment of the organisation's strategy

The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and research-informed project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. In agreement with your supervisor, you will decide upon your topic which will take the form of a practical outcome (artefact) with accompanying contextual material. The main consideration when choosing your topic is that it must be aligned to the programme you are studying, and you should consider the relevance of this topic to your future academic or professional development.