This four-year course starts with the foundation year, to help build your science, computing, maths, engineering skills and knowledge while preparing you for your engineering degree.

During the foundation year you will build your learning, knowledge, understanding and confidence in science, programming, mathematics and statistics.

You’ll gain the engineering skills and knowledge needed to study at BEng level where you’ll use the pioneering CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate) approach to problem solve software challenges. We are one of only a handful of universities in the UK to offer the CDIO international engineering education model developed by MIT that allows you to learn in a practical, hands-on way to tackle real industrial problems.

All through the course, you'll experience through hands-on learning from on and off campus and on-line learning. This will develop your practical agile problem-solving approach to create computing science solutions to problems. You will undertake group projects, typically sourced from industry or akin to problems in industry. Your groupwork will be supported through the use on-line tools and on-line project management solutions. You'll also develop skills enabling you to:

• work effectively and supportively in diverse and inclusive groups
• communicate effectively in groups and one to one
• apply project management to group-work
• apply principles of commercial management and consideration of wider issues.

The course will:

• introduce you to the discipline of software engineering, including programming concepts
• inform your choice of degree specialism in computing
• provide you with the study skills needed for a degree-level course
• allow you to apply academic knowledge and skills to real world technical challenges.

You will have the opportunity to work collaboratively in mixed engineering teams to research and solve industry work-related/based sourced problems. The CDIO approach will typically enable you to make contributions to industry - your software engineered prototype solution maybe the building block to a final solution used by industry.

Work experience

You will have the opportunity to take a placement in your third year, providing you meet the requirements.  If you can identify and secure a placement opportunity, with the support from the computing team, a placement will provide you with the further opportunity to develop your skills as a practicing computing professional, a personal development plan and evidence of your abilities for your future employers.  

Year-long placement opportunities in engineering often lead to opening doors to great potential engineering graduate employment opportunities with companies such as IBM, BULL, P&O, UEL and South Eastern Railway.

We have also offered a number of paid summer student internships open to students to apply for. A previous opportunity involved two students who undertook a development internship with us to look at the production of a prototype healthcare system. This was used to demonstrate the capability of such a system to surgical teams in Kent.

Students on this programme can usually expect to go on a small number of optional trips such as the National Computing Museum at Bletchley Park. We also aim to have a number of guest lecturers each year.