Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

This module is not available on a stand alone basis. It is therefore understood that all students taking this module will have taken Stage 1 material on the Physics programme.

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

To raise awareness of and develop students' transferable Physics career management skills.

To enable students to utilise current careers information to help them to make future careers decisions.

To reflect and market their employability attributes in job applications.

To work towards the idea of coding user-defined functions and further towards programming aimed at solving more substantial problems.

To promote some element of independent thinking and critical appraisal by linking the computational experience to the tackling of unfamiliar problems.

Module Summary

The career management aspects of the module will develop students' understanding of what it means to be employable in the national and international labour market. Computing methods are of great use in a wide range of applications of Physics. This module will introduce and develop familiarity with numerical computing, relate this to problem solving techniques based on independent thinking, and develop the ability to apply such methods independently, towards specific goals in Physics: theory and applications.

Outline Of Syllabus

Professional Skills: employability attributes awareness and development, occupational/LMI awareness, marketability including application writing and interview techniques.

Numerical Analysis: root finding, interpolation, numerical differentiation and integration, minimisation of functions, linear algebra and iterative methods.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

Understanding of the labour market and careers options.

Understanding of the transferable employability attributes developed.

Understanding of effective marketing techniques in the 21st century.

To understand a range of fundamental concepts in numerical analysis, and to be able to apply these to numerically solve problems from across Physics.

Intended Skill Outcomes

Understanding how to undertake effective careers research.

An ability to be self-aware and to use this to effectively market their skills sets and USP to potential employers in a variety of formats.

Confidence and accountability to implement strategies to develop transferable employability attributes.

Thinking critically and thinking quantitatively. Translation of physical problems into mathematical form. To be able to apply the fundamental building blocks of numerical analysis to solve Physics problems on a computer.

Students will develop skills across the cognitive domain (Bloom's taxonomy,2001 revised edition): remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures are used for the delivery of theory and explanation of methods, illustrated with examples, and for giving general feedback on marked work.

The teaching methods are appropriate to allow students to develop a wide range of skills, from understanding basic concepts and facts to higher-order thinking.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The two coursework assignments allow the students to develop their problem solving techniques and to practise the methods learnt in the module. They also allow the assessment of the computational skills acquired by the students.

The application portfolio will consist of a number of tasks (which could be, for example, application questions, CVs and cover letters).

General Notes

N/A