THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2022/2023

Timetable information in the Course Catalogue may be subject to change.

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh Futures Institute : Edinburgh Futures Institute

Postgraduate Course: Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Future Governance (fusion online) (EFIE11130)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh Futures Institute CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)
Course typeOnline Distance Learning AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course will help you develop strong, creative and methodologically robust interdisciplinary projects. It provides space for you to reflect on your learning, develop your digital writing and communication skills, and explore research methods appropriate to your project. Via this course you will bring together the cross-disciplinary understandings gained from your taught courses, and apply these to the design of your final project.
Course description Toward the beginning of their time in EFI, students will define a project idea which they will develop and refine throughout their studies, and which will culminate in the completion of the final 40-credit project. This Knowledge Integration and Project Planning course provides a framework through which students can develop their project ideas and their project plan.

Students will receive a handbook which will clearly sets out the expectations for this piece of work. It will include the requirement to engage in, and reflect on, how different disciplinary perspectives converge on the student's project area, how the methods training students have taken might influence the project plan, accounts of changes in thinking regarding project design and other requirements specific to individual programmes. Students will be required to make regular posts across the entire period of their studies, with evidence of active engagement and meaningful, consistent reflection required in order to pass. The handbook will specify the detailed requirements for these posts (for example frequency and format).

During their period of study in EFI, students will have the ability to develop their understanding of enquiry methodologies in four main ways: 1) through the EFI shared core, focusing on data skills, interdisciplinary enquiry and creative methods; 2) through elements within each individual programme which engage with domain-specific methods and knowledges; 3) through non-EFI credit-bearing courses which students choose to take on an elective basis, for example courses within the School of Social and Political Science Research Training Centre and the MSc Data Science, Technology and Innovation; 4) not-for-credit training from the Institute for Academic Development, events hosted by the Centre for Data, Culture and Society, free open courses and others. Students will be strongly encouraged to take advantage of these, and to use the Knowledge Integration and Project Planning course to bring together the various insights and understandings they introduce.

The primary medium for the course will be a digital environment which supports reflection across time, for example a blog or comparable space in which regular posts can be made, and which supports multiple formats and modes of representation (text, image, video). Programmes will choose the environment which aligns best with their pedagogic ethos, but a blog space will be provided as a baseline for all programmes. This space will be designed to enable peer support and peer commentary on each other's work, with granular permissions allowing students to make posts public or entirely private where preferred. It will be lightly monitored by teaching assistants in order to help programme teams identify instances where students appear to be struggling. It will be supported by three group supervision meetings and one individual supervisor meeting, each of which integrate with the support plan for the final project.

At the end of semester 1 (in year 1 for full-time students) students will submit a 1,000 word reflective summary of their work and its implications for their project - this will receive formative feedback from their project supervisor early in semester 2.

Students' reflections will culminate in a project plan which pulls together their thinking over the period of their study and applies it to a coherent, robust and well-structured plan for the completion of their project work. This project plan (2,000 words) will be submitted as the final assessed element of the course (in early May) and will form the basis of a focused meeting with supervisors in late May.

Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Fusion Course Delivery Information:

The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed. There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.

As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2022/23, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  None
Course Start Block 5 (Sem 2) and beyond
Course Start Date 01/05/2023
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Dissertation/Project Supervision Hours 1, Other Study Hours 3, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 192 )
Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) Other Study: Scheduled Group-work Hours (hybrid online/on-campus) - 3
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) The course will be assessed on a pass/fail basis. To pass, students must demonstrate:

1) Evidence of active engagement and meaningful, consistent posting in the blog (or comparable reflection space);

2) Sufficient quality of the final project plan (2,000 words).

The deadline for (2) is early May (year 1 for full-time).

Since this course will be assessed on a pass/fail basis, EFI will disregard course results when calculating average marks for the purposes of determining the award of Merit or Distinction for the programme.

Given that the project will run in parallel with taught elements of the programme, there will not be a formal progression point between the taught element and the project component.
Feedback Feedback will take three forms:

1) A culture of collegiality, peer feedback and support will be built to encourage students to share and comment on each other's posts; where students wish to make posts public - and it's appropriate to do so - there may be elements of support via commentary from external partners and a global public;

2) Students will receive formative feedback from their supervisor, focused on their 1,000 word synthesis, at the beginning of semester 2 - this will feed-forward into their final project plan;

3) Detailed feedback on the project plan will take place in late May, allowing the student to take account of it as they begin focused work on their project over the summer.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Evidence the ability to take a consistently reflexive approach to their own intellectual development.
  2. Evaluate, synthesise and apply insights from across disciplines to a discrete project idea.
  3. Demonstrate knowledge of a range of methodological approaches to enquiry, and make a convincing case for how these shape project design.
  4. Apply critical, creative and informed approaches to the design and execution of their project.
  5. Use an appropriate range of approaches to communicating and synthesising complex ideas from across diverse knowledge domains.
Reading List
Readings will be largely drawn from the core and elective courses on which students are enrolled, and the domain-specific events and activities they are engaged in. However there will also be a list specific to this course, updated annually and co-created across programmes, to incorporate readings in relevant areas including academic and general writing skills, digital communication skills, research project management, communicating visually and critical reflection.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills 1) Students will demonstrate integrative knowledge and understanding of cross-disciplinary perspectives on enquiry (SCQF 1);
2) Students will learn how to apply their knowledge, skills and understanding to the design of a project (SCQF 2);
3) Students will scope cross-disciplinary approaches to enquiry from a critical and integrative perspective (SCQF 3);
4) Students will develop high level skills in communication and representation of knowledge across different forms (SCQF 4);
5) Students will develop skills in reflective practice and demonstrate a high level of autonomy, taking responsibility for their own learning and supporting that of others (SCQF 5).
KeywordsKnowledge Integration,Project Planning,Future Governance,Futures Project
Contacts
Course organiserMrs Clare Llewellyn
Tel:
Email: cllewell@exseed.ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMr Lawrence East
Tel:
Email: Lawrence.East@ed.ac.uk
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