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Electronic Engineering with a Foundation Year - BEng (Hons)

Currently viewing course to start in 2025/26 Entry.

Do you want to work at the forefront of industry? Our BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering course will teach you a broad range of skills, helping you to become a rounded electrical engineer....

  • Level Foundation
  • Study mode Full Time
  • Location City Centre
  • School School of Engineering and the Built Environment
  • Faculty Faculty of Computing, Engineering and The Built Environment

This course is:

Open to International Students

Overview

Do you want to work at the forefront of industry? Our BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering course will teach you a broad range of skills, helping you to become a rounded electrical engineer.

Throughout your degree study, you’ll have access to our state-of-the-art technology and resources, plus you’ll have the opportunity to secure yourself an industry placement, giving you instrumental electrical engineering work experience.

This course is open to International students.

What's covered in this course?

All of our BEng (Hons) undergraduate courses can be studied over an extended full-time duration of four years by including a Foundation Certificate (year one of four). The Foundation Certificate provides a broad study programme that underpins the follow-on degree. In order to progress to the next year of the degree, it is necessary to achieve a pass in all of the modules of the Foundation Certificate.

You will gain an understanding of the social, commercial, legal, ethical, economic and environmental factors associated with engineering, as well as comprehensive knowledge of the science and mathematics associated with the discipline.

You will also develop the key transferrable skills that modern employers require, such as problem solving, project planning, presentation and communication. Our competitions, such as the annual Global Game Jam, will give you the chance to not only help run an acclaimed event, but also build and design your own creations, giving you invaluable experience.

Our engineering courses focus on project-based activities, giving you lots of opportunity to work in teams on projects from design to implementation. This will give you practical experience of applying engineering science to real world problems, working in multidisciplinary teams to develop your interpersonal skills, and prepare you for a key aspect of modern engineering practice.

We offer you the option of a placement during your course, either through a summer internship or year-long sandwich placement, which will provide you with the real-life skills and experience you’ll need to stand out from the crowd upon graduation. This has helped former graduates progress into roles with companies such as Rolls-Royce, Jaguar Land Rover and Wilmott Dixon.

Why Choose Us?

  • Industrial placement year option - Gain desirable employability skills and work experience with the option of an industrial placement year, that will take place between your second and final year of the course.
  • Employable graduates - Our graduates have progressed into roles with companies such as UTC Aerospace and Vector GB.
  • State-of-the-art facilities - You will be based at our Millennium Point campus in City Centre, where our facilities have undergone a £6.5 million investment with a new maker area, engineering labs/equipment and IT equipment to provide you with the very best learning experience. You will also use our industry-standard equipment and resources, including rapid prototyping, laser-cutting and CNC machining.
  • £1.1 million investment in new facilities from the IoT – The Institute of Technology (IoT) has invested in brand-new equipment and facilities, including an Electric Vehicle (EV) Test Rig, an Additive Manufacturing Machine (3D printer) and a material testing-split zone furnace - all industry grade technology that will advance your skills, making you more employable.
  • Conceive Design Implement Operate (CDIO) Initiative – You’ll be provided with an education stressing engineering fundamentals in the context of real-world systems and products, to develop your practical and professional skills.

Open Days

Join us for an on-campus Open Day where you'll be able to learn about this course in detail, chat to students, explore our campus and tour accommodation.

Next Open Day: 19 October 2024

Book your place

Entry Requirements

These entry requirements apply for entry in 2025/26.

All required qualifications/grades must have been achieved and evidenced at the earliest opportunity after accepting an offer to help confirm admission and allow for on-time enrolment. This can also include other requirements, like a fee status form and relevant documents. Applicants can track their application and outstanding information requests through their BCU mySRS account.

Essential requirements

80 UCAS Tariff points. Learn more about UCAS Tariff points.

If you have a qualification that is not listed, please contact us.

Fees & How to Apply

Please select your student status to view fees and apply
  • UK Student
  • International Student

UK students

Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.

Award: BEng (Hons)

Starting: Sep 2025

  • Mode
  • Duration
  • Fees

International students

Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.

Award: BEng (Hons)

Starting: Sep 2025

  • Mode
  • Duration
  • Fees

Access to computer equipment

You will require use of a laptop, and most students do prefer to have their own. However, you can borrow a laptop from the university or use one of our shared computer rooms.

Printing

You will receive £5 print credit in each year of your course, available after enrolment.

Field trips

All essential field trips and associated travel costs will be included in your course fees.

Access to Microsoft Office 365

Every student at the University can download a free copy of Microsoft Office 365 to use whilst at university and for 18 months after graduation.

Key software

You will be able to download SPSS and Nvivo to your home computer to support with your studies and research.

Key subscriptions

Subscriptions to key journals and websites are available through our library.

Specialist software

You will be able to access free licences for specialist software such as MATLab & Simulink, Catia, Autodesk, Kicad, Altium and Solidworks.

Project materials (mandatory)

Students will be provided with the necessary materials for their coursework projects. For final year projects, they can purchase required materials up to £50; any costs exceeding this amount will need to be covered by the student.

Clothing and safety equipment (mandatory)

This course requires the purchase of safety equipment in order to use the workshop facilities. These items cost approximately £50 together, and we can advise where to purchase items.

Excess printing (optional)

Once you have spent your £5 credit, additional printing on campus costs from 5p per sheet.

Personal stationery and study materials (optional)

Based on the past experience of our students, you might find it helpful to set aside about £30 for each year of your studies for your personal stationery and study materials.

Personal equipment (optional)

Whilst not essential, it is advised you own a computer or laptop with internet access, capable of performing basic tasks such as access to online materials and simulations, word processing, calculations, drawings (e.g., Word, Excel, Powerpoint).

Memberships (optional)

You may wish to join a union or professional body related to this course. Free IET Membership subscriptions during the student study is offered for 50 students every year. The subscription fee is covered by BCU.

Accommodation and living costs (optional)

The cost of accommodation and other living costs are not included within your course fees. More information on the cost of accommodation can be found in our accommodation pages.

Guidance for UK students

UK students applying for most undergraduate degree courses in the UK will need to apply through UCAS.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) is a UK organisation responsible for managing applications to university and college.

Applying through UCAS

  1. Register with UCAS
  2. Login to UCAS and complete your details
  3. Select your course and write a personal statement
  4. Get a reference
  5. Pay your application fee and submit your application

Course in Depth

Foundation Year

In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

First Year

In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Second Year

In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Final Year

In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Download course specification

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Employability

We will provide you with the attributes you need to be successful in employment. Upon graduating, you’ll be able to demonstrate professionalism at all levels, as well as being a creative problem solver with innovative ideas, a global outlook and an open-minded, diverse personality.

Birmingham City University also has the Graduate+ scheme, an extracurricular programme which has been designed to hone the subject-based skills you develop throughout the programme alongside broader employability skills. You’ll develop skills in CV writing, presentations, a portfolio and more.

International

Birmingham City University is a vibrant and multicultural university in the heart of a modern and diverse city. We welcome many international students every year – there are currently students from more than 80 countries among our student community.

The University is conveniently placed, with Birmingham International Airport nearby and first-rate transport connections to London and the rest of the UK.

Our international pages contain a wealth of information for international students who are considering applying to study here, including:

Facilities & Staff

[00:00:01] Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Olga.

[00:00:02] Speaker 2: And I'm Carlos. 

[00:00:03] Speaker 1: And we are both Engineering students here at BCU. And today we're going to take you on a tour in Millennium Point to all the engineering facilities.

[00:00:11] Speaker 2: Follow us.

[00:00:20] Speaker 1: Now we're on ground floor in the electronics lab, and this is where you can build circuits such as this one using these machines, you can control them and power them. So in your first year, you might end up doing a circuit like this, which is just the power on LED. And then you can go on using an oscilloscope to test sequences.

[00:00:39] Speaker 2: So now we're going to take you to the soldering lab. Anytime we need to do some soldiering on any type of projects, here is where we do them. Like Olga is doing right now, she is working on the micro mouse and with all the soldering for all the components. [00:00:57]

[00:01:00] Speaker 1: So this is where all the programming happens, such as coding and schematics and diagrams. All of this you'll be doing in this room. 

[00:01:12] Speaker 2: Welcome to our mechanical lab. This is where we test different materials on different bays for different applications, for things like their strength, versatility, and depending on which application, we have different machinery for it.

[00:01:26] Speaker 1: So we use microscopes to see the internal structures of materials, as you can see here. We do this to find how different structures behave under different conditions. So this is the workshop where we actually have real industrial machines here that are used from some of the parts for the projects we build. 

[00:01:45] Speaker 2: We do have industrial type machines capable of building engine parts like this one here. We are building a cylinder. 

[00:01:52] Speaker 1: Like this one here as well. This is a crank used in engines as well. It's really cool that we can use all of this machines just right here in our workshop.

[00:02:01] So this is another project that we built, and it's to test your knowledge on everything you've learned. And this is for the ball to stay on track at all times, even in this loop, as you can see here.

[00:02:09] This is the common area where you can come to either relax or catch up on your work as there's loads of seats and comfortable sofas.

[00:02:26] Speaker 1: So this is a hydraulics lab where you can do very interesting things like 3D printing, earthquake simulator and wind turbines. So these smaller 3D printers I used for reverse engineering and rapid prototyping. We can also use them to repair small things where we would ask students to design whatever parts broke and then we can 3D print it here so they can replace it on their project. In this room we actually have industrial level machines such as a metal 3D printer which can do something like this.

[00:02:56] Speaker 2: We also do various simulations here from a hydro station and also as you can see right next to me here, we do have a earthquake simulation running at the minute.

[00:03:09] So coming from our hydraulics lab, we are now in our civil lab. We test different types of soil, play around with it and try them out and develop new concrete as for example, here. 

[00:03:23] Speaker 1: So this is a biomedical lab where we test soils from different areas for pollution and soil health so we know if it's good for farming. 

[00:03:31] Speaker 2: So we are actually working with big names, big companies like Rivers Trust, and we are trying to develop new solutions for soil health. 

[00:03:40] Speaker 1: So this is the Formula student lab where we actually built a car that's going to go to Silverstone. 

[00:03:58] This is our engine test lab where we have an Audi, R8, E-TRON engine.

[00:04:03] Speaker 2: We also have a battery simulator in this room. We can actually do real life simulations of our engine, for example, in Silverstone, and see if we can actually complete the track and the times. 

[00:04:15] Thank you for watching our engineering facilities - I hope you enjoyed.

[00:04:18] Speaker 1: To find out more, you can come to one of our Open Days or you can visit the link below.


Our Facilities

Our state-of-the-art Engineering labs and workshops provide the perfect setting for practical work with modern-day teaching and learning facilities. We pride ourselves on equipping our students with the skill set that they need not only working on industry standard equipment, but having industrial links, which set them up perfectly for a career in engineering.

We have invested in industry-standard facilities to support the practice-based elements of our Engineering courses and give students as much practical learning as possible, to prepare for industry placements and job opportunities after graduation. Students have access to our facilities during classes, and can book out of class sessions with our specialist technicians. 

We are a partner of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Institute of Technology (GBSIoT) and have secured £1.1 million of government funding for investment in brand-new equipment and facilities. Funding of £808,000 from the Department for Education has supported our development of an Electric Vehicle (EV) Test Rig, an Additive Manufacturing Machine (3D printer) and a material testing-split zone furnace.

The IoT has enabled procurement of new technologies for material testing, electronics prototyping and production and 3D scanning to compliment computer aided design for manufacture.

Engineering facilities

Engineering bays
Engineering-facilities
Engineering-facilities
Engineering-Workshop-Facilities

Our staff

Dr Fawaz Annaz

Reader in Mechatronics

Dr. Fawaz Annaz had a long international career in Mechatronics Engineering, where has taught and conducted research in many countries including the UK, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia and Brunei.

More about Fawaz

Dr Venkatesh Vijay

Associate Professor

Dr Venkatesh Chennam Vijay received his PhD in Engineering for extending Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) principles into engineering distance learning from Birmingham City University (BCU). Currently, Vijay has been working on the STEAMhouse India initiative established by Munjal family-run BCM Foundation and Birmingham City University at...

More about Venkatesh

Professor Wenyan Wu

Professor in Advanced System Engineering

Professor Wenyan Wu has extensive interdisciplinary teaching and research experience across Engineering, Computing, and Technology throughout the UK and abroad. Her knowledge and expertise span the following areas: electronic engineering, informatics, water and environmental engineering, sensor technology, smart sensing and communication for...

More about Wenyan