Your engagement is at the heart of how we teach and how you learn.

This statement outlines information about:

  • online and in person activities,
  • your workload and the structure of your learning,
  • resources to support you
  • time available for extracurricular activities.

Please note that some aspects of learning and teaching delivery for some courses and students may be required to be varied from this model where professional and regulatory bodies require, including for accrediting, funding and visa compliance purposes.

Please see the Student Terms and Conditions for more information. 

Our delivery approach at Bath Spa University is centred around the importance of connecting students and staff to create a learning environment that is engaging and inclusive, participative and interactive, however the subject matter is delivered.

Will I be taught in-person or online?

We’ve developed expertise in blended delivery and online learning through innovation and student feedback. Our focus is on providing the best possible in-person experience for you and your peers, whilst maintaining the most successful aspects of online delivery that we know will benefit your learning.

All our modules include in-person activities, and no module is fully online unless it has been designed and validated as distance learning provision.

All seminars and workshops are in-person. Lectures are either in-person or online but always ‘live’ (in real time). We are continuing to deliver some online teaching as we know that this can work very well for large groups.

It can provide a more accessible, flexible, interactive, and inclusive experience for students than attending in a large lecture theatre, and works well alongside smaller group activities on campus. Most live lectures are recorded, as we know this is critical to providing an inclusive learning and teaching environment.

Tutorials and dissertation supervision can be on-campus or online, depending on your preference, and all written exams are online unless stated otherwise. Seminars and workshops are not normally recorded because these have a different dynamic, and are designed as participative, on-campus activities.

What will my workload be?

Your learning is organised into modules which carry academic credits. For an undergraduate (Bachelors) award, you will usually complete 360 credits across three years. For a postgraduate (Masters) award, you will usually complete 180 credits over one year (full-time) or two years (part-time). Each credit is equivalent to 10 student engagement hours: for example, a 20-credit module will require you to complete 200 hours of learning.

The academic year is divided into terms called semesters (for undergraduate provision) and trimesters (for postgraduate programmes). Each semester is 15 weeks long, including 13 weeks of scheduled learning and teaching followed by two weeks that are used flexibly by each course (for example, for assessment and feedback, or revision sessions).

Each postgraduate trimester is also 15 weeks long but the number of scheduled learning and teaching weeks varies between courses. Our academic timetable and calendar are designed to support your learning through careful pacing of teaching and assessment activity. This means that to engage effectively with your course, you’ll be doing around 40 hours of study each week during term time.

Student engagement hours include attending scheduled learning and teaching sessions (for example, seminars and lectures), which are always facilitated by lecturers or tutors. Engagement hours also include independent study (for example, preparation for scheduled sessions, follow-up work, wider reading or practice, group work, the completion of assessment tasks and revision).

Scheduled learning and teaching changes from year to year and tends to decrease as you move through your degree and as you focus more on independent study (for example, by completing self-directed projects or research).

Our undergraduate courses typically structure scheduled learning and teaching time across the years of study in the following way:

  • Year 1 (Level 4): 12 hours per week (or 312 hours across the year)
  • Year 2 (Level 5): 12 hours per week (or 312 hours across the year)
  • Year 3 (Level 6): up to 9 hours per week (or up to 234 hours per year, depending on your course and choice of modules)

Our postgraduate courses (Level 7) vary according to subject: a typical postgraduate taught degree course will offer around six hours of scheduled learning and teaching time per week when you’re studying standard modules as a full-time student. This will vary for modules which are taught mainly through one-to-one tutorials (such as dissertation or project modules). This will also vary for PGCE courses, which are structured differently.

Please check the individual course page for details specific to your chosen course, and if you still have questions, please email the course tutor listed on the web page.

To get the most out of your time at Bath Spa University, you need to engage in your studies by attending all scheduled learning and teaching activities, by completing all your assessments and by undertaking independent study.

We have a University Student Engagement and Attendance Policy that sets out why we monitor student engagement and how we offer advice and guidance to enable you to make informed decisions about your engagement. We have also set out how we support and measure student engagement, and also provides information about how you can use the new Bath Spa App to measure your own progress. For any queries, you can get in touch with our Student Engagement team by email: myengagement@bathspa.ac.uk.

We care about enabling you to connect with your studies and your personal learning journey. In order to support you effectively, the University is investing in a new online MyEngagement dashboard. This will become available during the 2022/23 academic year and will give you an overview of how often you engage with your studies and how this compares to other students on your course and your year group.

What resources are available to support me?

Across our campuses, we have a wide range of facilities available to you, as well as an extensive array of digital services and resources that can be accessed anywhere, anytime. As a Bath Spa student, you can browse the library bookshelves, use on-campus study spaces, head to the Students’ Union for extra-curricular activities, and attend in-person sessions and events from a wide range of University services.

You can also book workshops and practice and rehearsal spaces across our campuses. Most services also offer online appointments, too.

Is there time for extracurricular activities, including sport?

Other than in exceptional circumstances, there are no timetabled sessions for undergraduate teaching on Wednesday afternoons after 1.00pm to allow space for extra curricular activities. Timetabled sessions for postgraduate teaching on Wednesday afternoons are kept to a minimum.

Is how I’m taught likely to change?

We continually review and reflect on our approach to the delivery of teaching, so that we can respond to both student feedback and to changes in the external environment.