Congratulations on securing your place to study at Canterbury Christ Church University! We look forward to seeing you in September. This is an exciting time where you prepare to start studying at the University and you may have questions that you would like us to answer. Please read the information provided and if you still have questions, get in touch. I hope this will be the start of a long relationship with the University and that it will be a truly enjoyable and beneficial experience.

Gareth Ward
Course Director for Business Information Systems

Key dates

Academic Calendar: Semesters

View key dates for this Academic Calendar for 2024-25 including when teaching starts and finishes and when you break for holidays.  

Welcome

You are about to embark on one of the most exciting times in your life as you are welcomed into our community. You may well feel quite excited or even a little anxious about the big step you are about to take. University is a place where many different people come together from very diverse backgrounds to change their lives. You may feel very different to others, when in fact you may find yourself sitting next to someone who becomes a lifelong friend. You are joining a fantastic team dedicated to making you feel at home and who will help you transition into your shiny new university life. With a degree, you will have the potential to make a huge difference to your own future and those of others. I am looking forward to meeting you and learning about your aspirations for your future.

You may wish to keep track of what we are doing in the Faculty by following us on our Faculty Instagram!

Getting started

Your Foundation year is aimed to help you move towards being able to study on a degree course and takes place over the entirety of the academic year. The academic year is split into two semesters - the first running from September to January and the second from late January to May.

You will study three modules per semester, where each module covers different areas of the foundation year. You will be learning skills needed to study at Degree level while you are studying the different areas. You will study alongside students who are aiming to study different degree subjects on successful completion of the Foundation Year.

The first semester will involve you studying some simple computer programming in the Python programming language, looking at the role of computers in society - their positive and negative effects, and working with some different application software so you can manipulate digital media such a pictures, video, sound and words while learning the related computing terms and concepts.

In the second semester you will improve your mathematics and learn about computer hardware enabling you to understand how computers are built and operate, while also undertaking a small computer software development project by yourself.

Foundation Year Core Modules:

Semester 1

  • Computing in Society
  • Programming Concepts
  • Working with Software

Semester 2

  • Working with Computer Hardware
  • Mathematics / Advanced Mathematics
  • Development Project 

Over the year, you will learn how to record your work in a logbook, so that you can provide evidence of your progress, improve your writing skills in essays and presentations. You will be assessed by assignment work, presentation and some tests that happen in the classroom. These will be related to tasks you have done and the type of task that you would undertake in industry.

You will need to at University campus or online classes at least three days a week to attend the timetabled classes. The timetable will be given to you when it is finalised over the summer. There may be sessions where you need to work with other students, either face-to-face or remotely.

On successful completion of the foundation year, you will be eligible to move into year 1 of the BSc (Hons) Business Information Systems. From here, you will start to develop specialist knowledge and skills that will feed through the three years of the degree course.

If you would like to undertake a task and have your own computer, the following website is a good starting point to understand how computer programming works. This is especially recommended if you have not done this kind of activity before. You can download the software for free and make use of the tutorials to create simple apps for Android phones.

You will need a Google account, and it may be worth creating a new one, should you wish to use this. Under the ‘Resources’ menu option, there are a number of tutorials at different levels, from Basic to Advanced. Try a few basic tutorials before you look at Intermediate or Advanced ones. This will help you learn how the tutorials guide you as well as using the App Inventor Interface before you try more complex tasks.

Alternatively, you could look at Programming in Python using either of the sites below:

Both of these are free.

 Other information

We recommend you don’t buy any software, as much of what you will need during your degree will be available to you for free or at a much-reduced price once you start. You will find having your own computer exceedingly useful. This will help you to do your assessments in your own time and attend any classes that are online. If you are looking to buy a computer, then we suggest that you look at reviews of different computers online, as we find it hard to recommend a particular product. As a computing student, you will find that you will need a computer with an above minimum specification for the chosen operating system (look at what is required for Windows 10 or 11).

We suggest that you look at the recommended specification for Visual Studio Professional as an absolute minimum. Higher specifications will help safeguard you against future increases in minimum requirements, and higher processor speeds will help run multiple programmes at once. For hard disk space, larger capacities are required to fit additional software. A minimum suggested size would be 256GB – particularly important if you plan to use solid state drives. You should note that we use the Windows environment predominantly in the Department of Computing, so if you buy an Apple system then it would benefit from being able to dual boot Windows and MacOS. If you buy a Linux only system, then you may find you will need to install a Windows operating system at a later date, and this is generally more expensive than buying a computer with Windows already installed on it.

You may find that if you are doing a lot of studying on your computer, having a web-cam, headphones and possibly even a second monitor really useful. If you use a laptop, do consider a mouse and full-size keyboard to help. We have found that students who are trying to study at home appreciate having a good, stable internet connection, and we have found that changing provider at the moment is taking longer than it has done previously.

Your welcome and induction will be w/c 16 September 2024 - we look forward to meeting you then.

 Community

On the social side, the Student Union (CCSU) has a huge range of clubs and societies – all of which have unique social calendars of their own and offer endless opportunities to make lifelong friends and discover new hobbies. And you can always create your own society and cultivate your own community!

CCSU will be hosting their Welcome Fayre on Wednesday 18th September 2024. Make sure you keep checking the CCSU website for further details and how to get involved.

We understand that you may be nervous about your first few weeks on campus but rest assured - you'll be joining a nurturing and supportive environment where diversity, equality and individuality are part of everything we do.

You can find out more about our welcoming community and making friends here.

If you are an International Student joining us then please see our International Student Support pages for further information and guidance.

Pre-course reading

There is no particular reading we want you to do before you start, but it may be worth looking at the Technology pages of online news sources to see the common areas that are being talked about in the field of computing and business.

We suggest the following sites:

These are worth looking at once or twice a week, if you are not accustomed to reading current affairs articles.

You can often find background information to the stories by searching Wikipedia which may help your understanding of the topic.

International student success programme

International students: don't miss out! Make sure you register for our international student success programme which provides practical advice on preparing to live and study in the UK.

Contact details

If you have any queries, please feel to contact the Foundation Year Science Team