Teaching units will cover particular topics within the academic field of your degree programme, but will also cover a range of research methods appropriate to what you are studying. Both types of course are important, for as a postgraduate you have to be able to show that you have both the knowledge and understanding of your field and the skills and knowledge of research and analysis methods.
Teaching methods will, of course, vary a great deal between different programmes and subjects. Traditional methods of teaching are still the most common ones, and you will probably have a significant amount of your courses taught through lectures, seminars and practical or laboratory classes – these will all be very familiar to you as a successful graduate. However, there has been a growth over recent years in the development of alternative teaching methods – so you may find that you experience a number of approaches with which you are less familiar. These might include the following.
The use of a range of techniques from student presentations, to group decision-making exercises, to role play activities, to drama and workshop approaches is increasing. All require students to be more actively involved, and not simply listen to presentations by lecturers and professors.
The use of information and communications technology for learning and teaching has expanded rapidly, and there are almost no programmes that will not involve you in using IT in some way. This may, at a very simple level, just involve word processing your assignments, and using the internet for literature searching. More likely, though, you will find parts of your programme require you to use IT as an integral part of what you do. Any activity using IT as part of the learning is called ‘e-learning’, and where programmes use both e-learning and other more traditional methods such as lectures this is referred to as ‘blended learning’.
Chapter 8 of the book Postgraduate Study in the UK by Nicholas and Rosalind Foskett gives more information about the sorts of e-learning you might be involved in.
In addition to learning about your subject and about research methods, all programmes will include opportunities to develop general skills such as team working and communications. This is a requirement of the national benchmark standards for postgraduate programmes, and is included to give you a range of skills that will be valuable when you enter a job. You will probably not find that your programme has separate courses on ‘team working’, though, since these parts of the programme will be integrated into the course. So, for example, a unit on ‘Planning Waste Management’ may include an exercise where you have to work together as a group to solve a problem about choosing a site to dispose of nuclear waste, and then report back to the class using a formal presentation. Although the focus is on nuclear waste management you will be developing group, teamwork and presentational skills at the same time. You will probably be making friends, too!
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