International Year One - Business

Introducing Marketing will lead you through basic principles and strategies used by marketers to research, design, produce, distribute, sell and manage products and services to satisfy a variety of target markets.

You’ll also be introduced to the types of career paths that marketing opens up. Employment opportunities in this fast-paced industry are wide-ranging and suit a variety of personality types and skills sets, including both introverts and extroverts. You will develop your knowledge and ability to apply principles of marketing to different types of organisations using a variety of marketing tools. Finally, you will build employability skills around teamwork, presentation delivery, research and the use of IT.

This module will allow you to explore how business interacts with society and the economy. You will look at the driving forces that are changing these relationships.

You’ll gain a theoretical and practical understanding of a broad range of global business issues through informative lectures and practical tutor-led workshops. Your tutors will introduce and create a research-rich learning experience. You’ll be assessed on your understanding of the subject and ability to critically analyse and reflect on some of the most pressing issues in business and society. Wherever possible, this will simulate ‘real-world’ scenarios and you’ll work on a series of tasks during the semester to prepare for the final assessment.

The module aims to develop you with the financial knowledge and numerical and problem-solving skills to support informed and effective business decisions.  You will be able to evaluate individual projects by using investment appraisal techniques, accounting for risk and uncertainty alongside, developing competencies to enhance your ability to make accurate decisions in relation to planning and control for a business as a whole. You will also be able to assess the performance of businesses in regards to their profitability, solvency, financial structure and working capital management by means of analysing and interpreting their financial statements and importantly

Through the interpretation of accounts, you will learn how to calculate key measures such as profitability, liquidity, and activity to assess business performance and most importantly translate these indicators into meaningful information for key stakeholders.   These skills are highly valued by employers are they demonstrate the ability to apply financial information to the real-world problems faced by businesses.

As a business graduate, this module will allow you the ability to enter employment with an appropriate level of analytical understanding and proficiency in everyday business software such as Excel spreadsheets. This module provides these essential business skills giving you a theoretical and applied understanding of various statistical and modelling applications supported through practical IT exercises.

You will work on a number of key techniques linked to which are IT practicals, supporting work for practice and specific items relating to your assessment. You will undertake various assessment tasks including the creation of a portfolio of preparatory work leading to a short answer examination that places emphasis on your findings and problem interpretation.

These analytical, practical IT and interpretative skills are directly transferable to your working life, through part-time employment or a full-time graduate role. Your additional experiences within the module centre on support reading giving you additional awareness of the broad applicability of the module content across the wider business and management subject area.

This module will enable you to do two things: firstly to perform better across the range of modules in the International Year One; and secondly to develop a range of key academic skills for success.

The module will develop your ability to read and critically evaluate a wide range of texts including journals, business magazines, data sets and online information. It will then equip you with the ability to produce different types of written and oral responses such as reports, short-paragraph responses, presentations, visual representations (i.e. graphs and charts) or posters. You will develop critical responses to what you read and then use this to create ideas, recommendations and responses based on evidence.

The module will prepare you for the academic skills required to put all of the above into practice both within the module and across the whole International Year One programme.

Entrepreneurs are crucial for business and economic success. However, there are widely different academic approaches to understanding them, their behaviour and the factors that help them thrive. This module introduces you to entrepreneurship through the key principles, examples and theories in the field, and includes looking at local businesses as well as global success stories.

The module also helps you understand, analyse and explain start-up businesses – their founders, as well as their economic and social impact
– and how governments respond to innovation and enterprise. On the way, you’ll meet some fascinating people with brilliant ideas, as well as learn how they’ve overcome various challenges.

This module introduces you to the foundation links and relationships between an organisation, its management and its people. Employers seek out graduates with the knowledge and skills to transform organisations in the face of continuous and rapid economic, environmental and social change. This module will therefore support you to develop an understanding of how a heightened awareness of people’s workplace behaviour, actions and attitudes enhances organisational sustainability and team performance. Such understanding is fundamental for your successful graduate career.

Taking a research-rich approach, you’ll be introduced to a range of concepts, theories, models and research evidence. You’ll then apply them in a
practical, discipline-specific context using case studies, reflecting on personal understanding and experience plus real organisation examples.

This module will not be available for January 2023

Study and Consultancy Skills for Marketing will build on your knowledge of marketing theory and how to use it to come up with viable solutions to real marketing problems. It’s a practical module that involves working on simulated business projects in teams, designed to not only develop your teamwork and interpersonal skills but also your analytical skills and commercial awareness.

You’ll be encouraged to learn through a process of enquiry using digital information and technology. You will engage in opportunities to develop your independent thinking, apply discipline knowledge to complex problems/opportunities, communicate (present and report) and collaborate to create new knowledge and understanding of contemporary issues within your discipline area. Your academic tutor will monitor your progress by ensuring all students are involved and will encourage you to share your ideas and to comment constructively on those of others.

This module is conceived as a travel guide to the increasingly complex and ever exciting world of tourism. Like any guidebook, it seeks to stimulate the imagination, point out noteworthy areas of interest and facilitate the learning experience.

The module addresses three basic questions. First, it asks how we can understand tourism and events both as economic and cultural practices. The second question is concerned with the extent of the tourism and events sector in the twenty-first century as well as its impacts on and influences on the wider community. The final question addresses the different components that constitute the tourism and events complexes including, subjectivities, spaces and business.

This is an eclectic module that includes perspectives from different disciplines. This eclecticism serves to emphasise the multiple connections and dimensions of tourism and events.  With this module, you will develop critical, practical, academic study and information literacy skills to enable the full achievement of learning outcomes at the module and programme levels.