Things are changing

Update 21 January 2020

Please note. this is a personal perspective, not official MMU. There may be changes and decisions that I am not party to, that will influence the final outcome.

Many of you know our BSc Web Development programme has not recruited for the last two years and will close this summer as our final cohort graduate. This programme in conjunction with three others has successfully produced graduates who have gone into front-end, back-end, software development, UXD, UX research, project management, product managers, media producers, designers, dev ops, testers, marketers, SEO and a bunch more roles in digital. Some have also gone of to further education including Masters in Comp Sci, Project Management, Marketing and UX and at least one PhD. It all started with our dabbling with HTML in 1994 and the first coding unit around 1996.

For the last two years we have recruited solely to the BSc Digital Media and Communications. We think these students will graduate into a number of the above roles, but while understanding front-end, most will not be coders.

So what happens now?

The good news.

We have been given the chance to develop a revised programme, BSc Web and UX Design, for the new School of Digital Arts (SoDA) for 2021. Currently this course is one of a suite of programmes lined up to form part of the School. We hope to continue our previous schedule for front-end development but to include more design, design theory and UX practices.

We believe that being part of the multidisciplinary School of Digital Arts will offer an industry like environment as students get to work across disciplines and practices.

As a team we were also involved with the development of the Digital User Experience (UX) Professional Integrated Degree Apprenticeship Standard. This has led to the cross-faculty development and launch of a UX Apprentice Degree (as part of SoDA) for September 2020 which we will be involved in delivering.

Please contact Richard Eskins if you would like more information.

The BSc Web Development is well known by the digital industries in Manchester. Graduates primarily go into roles in front-end, but also back end, software development, project management, testing, UXD and UX research. They work locally in digital teams for the BBC, Coop, AutoTrader, Booking.com, Rental Cars, and numerous digital agencies such as Code, Apadmi, PushOn, Reason Digital, 48Space, Frank Design and Supremo; and global companies such as Amazon, Google and Apple.