University home > Unit and programme catalogues in 2021/22 > Programme catalogue > Faculty of Arts > Centre for Innovation > Physics with Innovation (MSci) > Specification
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Programme code | 1INOV010U |
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Programme type | Single Honours |
Programme director(s) |
Terence McMaster (Physics contact)
Daniella Jenkins Programme Director (Innovation) |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
School/department | Centre for Innovation |
Second School/department | School of Physics |
Teaching institution | University of Bristol |
Awarding institution | University of Bristol |
Accrediting types: |
Accredited by the Institute of Physics (IOP) for the purpose of fully meeting the educational requirement for Chartered Physicist. (https://www.iop.org/education/support-work-higher-education/degree-accreditation-recognition) |
Relevant QAA subject benchmark groups | Physics, astronomy and astrophysics (2019) (benchmark statement) |
Mode of study | Full Time |
Programme length | 4 years (full time) |
The digital and creative innovators of the 21st Century will bring together arts and humanities, design, science, engineering and enterprise to deliver new products, services and ways of working and living. This degree combines an in-depth subject specialism in Physics with interdisciplinary breadth, creative teamwork and entrepreneurial skills. Students undertaking this course will spend half their time studying Physics to gain a solid discipline strength whilst spending the other half of their time applying that knowledge to innovate and translate their ideas into plans for digital and creative enterprises, both social and commercial.
A physics degree teaches skills which are invaluable in innovation. The students will learn how to be quantitative, and to view the world as something which can be measured. As a subject, Physics has a fantastic track history of innovation, from the transistor through to the World Wide Web. Physicists are adept at breaking complex systems down into simple models which can provide insight, and we nurture in them the instinct to test their hunches by doing experiments. The degree in Physics with Innovation will give students the unique opportunity to combine these core physics skills and knowledge with a comprehensive training in entrepreneurship and innovation to produce a new generation of technical entrepreneurs.
All our degree programmes share the University’s aim of “offering students the best possible learning experience in a research environment” - enabling them to realise their full potential in their chosen careers. An important goal is to maximise student choice while maintaining academic consistency. The programmes provide academic and practical training in Physics to:
Programme Intended Learning Outcomes | Learning and Teaching Methods |
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Lectures are the principal form of teaching. Acquisition of knowledge and understanding for innovation, design and entrepreneurship occurs through lectures, workshops, seminars and tutorials (13, 14, 15 & 16). Workshops and demonstration to develop student practical innovation skills acquisition (13, 16). Innovation challenges to develop students’ skills in practical innovation and entrepreneurship (13, 14 & 16). Innovation project supervision and design challenge mentoring meetings to provide formative feedback (13, 14 & 16). |
Methods of Assessment | |
Assessment is through a combination of unseen written examinations, moderated course work, laboratory reports and project reports or dissertations, IT work, oral presentations and interviews. Individual and group innovation coursework portfolios (including rapid prototyping and proof of concepts) and presentations (13-16) Reflective and critical accounts of practical work and learning (13 - 16) Iterative and agile practice based innovation and entrepreneurship challenges (13,14 & 16) |
Programme Intended Learning Outcomes | Learning and Teaching Methods |
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Intellectual skills are developed through the learning and teaching methods outlined in the section above. Tutorials, assessment of laboratory and IT work and the write up of projects or dissertations, the viva and poster session are all key to developing intellectual and presentational skills. Acquisition of skills to innovate, design and create enterprises occurs through lectures, workshops, seminars and tutorials (8-11). Workshops and demonstration to develop student practical innovation skills acquisition (8-11). Innovation challenges to develop students’ skills in practical innovation and entrepreneurship (8-11). Innovation project supervision and design challenge mentoring meetings to provide formative feedback (8-11). |
Methods of Assessment | |
The methods of assessment outlined above all contain components which assess these skills. In particular, those associated at all levels with laboratory and project work have a component reflecting presentation and performance of the skills detailed here. Individual and group innovation coursework portfolios (including rapid prototyping and proof of concepts) and presentations (8-11) Reflective and critical accounts of practical work and learning (8-11) Iterative and agile practice based innovation and entrepreneurship challenges (8-11) |
Programme Intended Learning Outcomes | Learning and Teaching Methods |
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Transferable skills are developed through the learning and teaching methods outlined above. The project or dissertation is key to developing decision making, time-management and efficient use of resources. Group working is developed as part of the laboratory and project work, and general communication skills are used as part of project/dissertation assessment, involving as it does a written report and a viva. ICT skills are acquired throughout the programmes either in specific courses or as part of laboratory and project work, which includes literature surveys and distillation of information from diverse sources. Acquisition of skills to innovate, design and create enterprises occurs through lectures, workshops, seminars and tutorials (12-18). Workshops and demonstration to develop student practical innovation skills acquisition (13-18). Innovation challenges to develop students’ skills in practical innovation and entrepreneurship (12-18). Innovation project supervision and design challenge mentoring meetings to provide formative feedback (12-18). |
Methods of Assessment | |
The methods of assessment outlined above all contain components which assess these skills. In particular, those associated at all levels with laboratory and project work have a component reflecting presentation and performance of the skills detailed here. Individual and group innovation coursework portfolios (including rapid prototyping and proof of concepts) and presentations (12-18) Reflective and critical accounts of practical work and learning (12-18) Iterative and agile practice based innovation and entrepreneurship challenges (12-18) |
Statement of expectations from the students at each level of the programme as it/they develop year on year.
Level C/4 - Certificate |
They will have a sound knowledge of the basic concepts of a subject, and will have learned how to take different approaches to solving problems. They will be able to communicate accurately, and will have the qualities needed for employment requiring the exercise of some personal responsibility. They will also have gained an understanding of how design and systems thinking can be applied to problems to innovate and unearth novel and creative solutions that may have been missed from undertaking a purely analytical approach whilst gaining experience in working in multidisciplinary teams. |
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Level I/5 - Intermediate |
They will have developed a sound understanding of the principles in their field of study, and will have learned to apply those principles more widely. Through this, they will have learned to evaluate the appropriateness of different approaches to solving problems. Their studies may well have had a vocational orientation, enabling them to perform effectively in their chosen field. Student will be expected to critically reflect on past and present case studies and develop further their transdisciplinary working to real world digital and creative client problems. |
Level H/6 - Honours |
They will have the qualities necessary for employment in situations requiring the exercise of personal responsibility and decision-making. They will have developed an understanding of a complex body of knowledge, some of it at the current boundaries of an academic discipline. Through this, the graduate will have developed analytical techniques and problem-solving skills that can be applied in many types of employment. The graduate will be able to evaluate evidence, arguments and assumptions, to reach sound judgements, and to communicate effectively. They should have the qualities needed for employment in situations requiring the exercise of personal responsibility, and decision-making in complex and unpredictable circumstances. Within the transdisciplinary group project the students will be expected to innovate for their own chosen problem by exploring the potential of new technologies to enable disruptive innovation to change the way people work and live. They will be supported by mentors and coaches to explore how their proposed solutions may be turned into an enterprise. |
Level M/7 - Masters |
At level M, students are expected to pull together all that they have learnt in prior years to create an enterprise; this may focus on an innovative digital and creative product or service, or a social innovation. Students will be required to assess the market, feasibility, IP, sustainability, finance and desirability of the proposition and create a proof of concept prototype to test with real world users. Much of the study undertaken at Masters level will have been at, or informed by, the forefront of an academic or professional discipline. Students will have shown originality in the application of knowledge, and they will understand how the boundaries of knowledge are advanced through research. They will be able to deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively, and they will show originality in tackling and solving problems. They will have the qualities needed for employment in circumstances requiring sound judgement, personal responsibility and initiative, in complex and unpredictable professional environments. |
The intended learning outcome mapping document shows which mandatory units contribute towards each programme intended learning outcome.
For information on the admissions requirements for this programme please see details in the undergraduate prospectus at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/prospectus/undergraduate/ or contact the relevant academic department.
UG Workload Statement
Success as an undergraduate student depends on you being able to make the transition to self-motivated, independent learning. Programmes are designed to assist you in this development, in many cases by starting with units in which timetabled teaching, such as lectures and practical classes, provides the foundations of knowledge and skills in a subject, moving on to individual research-based work. Over time you will be expected to take increasing responsibility for your own learning, guided by the feedback on your work that you will receive. At the heart of your studies at every level there must be regular and disciplined individual reading, reflection and writing and it is this skill of independent studies, above all others, that will serve you best when you leave the University.
Most programmes use credits and a 20 credit unit broadly equates to about 200 hours of student input. This includes all activities related to the teaching, learning and assessment of taught units.
A component of this is the time that you spend in class, in contact with the teaching staff, which includes activities such as lectures, laboratories, tutorials and fieldwork. Some of this activity may be online and could consist of activity that is synchronous (using real-time environments such as Blackboard Collaborate) or asynchronous (using tools such as tutor moderated discussion forums, blogs or wikis).
In some programmes there are field courses and/or placements that will take place in concentrated periods of time.
Outside scheduled activities you are expected to pursue your own independent learning to build your knowledge and understanding of the subjects you are studying. Such independent activities include, reviewing lecture material, reading textbooks, working on examples sheets, completing coursework, writing up laboratory notes, preparing for in-class progress tests and revising for examinations.
We recognise that many students undertake paid employment. To achieve a sensible balance between work and study, you are advised to undertake paid work for no more than 15 hours per week in term-time.
Professional Programmes
Many undergraduates in the Faculty of Health Sciences will be following the professional programmes of:
For these professional programmes, full time attendance is compulsory unless absence is formally approved. Academic activities are timetabled throughout the 5-day week and student workload is around 40 hours per week on average. Where possible, students in the early years are permitted Wednesday afternoons for sport and extra-curriculum activities. This may not be available in later years of professional programmes as when a student progresses through the curricula there is an increasing exposure to clinical and professional activities. Students in clinic or on placements may need to stay later than core times of 08.00 – 18.00 or even overnight to observe out-of-hours activities. This increasing exposure to clinical activities means that students on these professional programmes often have longer term dates than the University standard. Individual years within programmes are likely to vary in length (for example because of the timings of placements) and further information on this will be found in individual programme regulations. Another important point to note is that many of the assessments sit outside of the standard University examination timetable and are likely to be more frequent meaning that students will more oftentimes be engaged in revision activities and self-directed learning.
Faculty of Health Sciences
Faculty Assessment and Feedback Statement for Undergraduate Students. University of Bristol access only.
Students studying across the different specialisms on the innovation degrees come together as a cohort to learn and apply design and systems thinking for digital and creative innovation and put it into practice their working in transdisciplinary project teams. Students will learn from past and present success and failure case studies to help students think about future opportunities. The transdisciplinary project work in the second year works with real world clients where students develop empathy for the people they are designing for, explore solutions, iterating to develop an unexpected range of possibilities, and create prototypes to take back to the client to test with real customers or users. In their third year students explore innovative and disruptive ideas, potentially designing things that people don’t yet know they want by exploring the potential of new technologies to enable disruptive innovation, changing the way people live and work. Students will learn about different ways to generate ideas, ranging from brainstorming to crowd-sourcing, exploring project opportunities and creating prototypes to test with real people. Alongside this students will learn about different kinds of enterprise that can be used to take forward their ideas supported by mentors and coaches. The final year pulls together all the students have learnt to create an enterprise which may be an innovative digital and creative product, service or social innovation.
This integrated Masters programme has been designated as type III: Professional or Practice Masters in accordance with the QAA Degree Characteristics Statement. Please see the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes for further information on this type of programme.
Minimum requirement of pass mark 40% in each unit
Unit Name | Unit Code | Credit Points | Status | ||
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Core Physics I:Mechanics and Matter | PHYS10006 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-1 | |
Core Physics II: Oscillations, Waves and Fields | PHYS10005 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-2 | |
Physics Laboratory | PHYS10004 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Essential Maths for Physics | PHYS11400 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-2 | |
Introductory Mathematics for Physics | PHYS10009 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-1 | |
Design and Systems Thinking for Innovation | INOV10001 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Transdisciplinary Group Project 1: Being Human | INOV10002 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Certificate of Higher Education | 120 |
This integrated Masters programme has been designated as type III: Professional or Practice Masters in accordance with the QAA Degree Characteristics Statement. Please see the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes for further information on this type of programme.
Students must achieve a year mark of 50 or more out of a hundred at the end of the second year to be able to progress on to the four year programme.
Unit Name | Unit Code | Credit Points | Status | ||
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Mechanics, Oscillations and Quantum Mechanics I | PHYS20028 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-1 | |
Mathematical Physics 202 | PHYS23020 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-1 | |
Electromagnetism, Waves and Quantum Mechanics II | PHYS20029 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-2 | |
Thermal Physics | PHYS20027 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-2C | |
Intermediate Computational Physics | PHYS20032 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Practical Physics 201 | PHYS29010 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Transdisciplinary Group Project 2: Solving Someone's Problem | INOV20002 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Independent Study Work Placement | INOV20003 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Diploma of Higher Education | 120 |
This integrated Masters programme has been designated as type III: Professional or Practice Masters in accordance with the QAA Degree Characteristics Statement. Please see the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes for further information on this type of programme.
Unit Name | Unit Code | Credit Points | Status | ||
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Practical Physics 301 | PHYS39010 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
Solid State Physics 3021 | PHYS30021 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-1 | |
Quantum Physics 301 | PHYS32011 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-1 | |
Computational Physics 301 | PHYS38012 | 10 | Mandatory | TB-4 | |
New Creative Ventures | INOV30006 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-2 | |
Making Ideas Happen | INOV30007 | 20 | Mandatory | D | TB-2 |
Ideation for Innovation | INOV30008 | 20 | Mandatory | A | TB-1 |
Select 10 credit points from: | |||||
Environmental Physics | PHYS30027 | 10 | Optional | TB-2D | |
Condensed Matter Physics 311 | PHYS31111 | 10 | Optional | TB-2C | |
Biophysics 321 | PHYS31211 | 10 | Optional | TB-1 | |
Particle Physics | PHYS32012 | 10 | Optional | TB-1B | |
Nanophysics | PHYS32600 | 10 | Optional | TB-2D | |
Galaxies 301 | PHYS34011 | 10 | Optional | TB-2C | |
High Energy Astrophysics 301 | PHYS34012 | 10 | Optional | TB-2D | |
Stellar Structure and Evolution 301 | PHYS34013 | 10 | Optional | TB-1B | |
Methods of Theoretical Physics 3 | PHYS30015 | 10 | Optional | TB-2 | |
Physics with Innovation (BSc) | 120 |
This integrated Masters programme has been designated as type III: Professional or Practice Masters in accordance with the QAA Degree Characteristics Statement. Please see the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes for further information on this type of programme.
INOVM0026 is a must pass unit. For the definition of must pass units please see the Glossary of Terms from Annex 1 to the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/esu/assessment/annex/glossary.html
Minimum requirement of pass mark 50% in each unit
Unit Name | Unit Code | Credit Points | Status | ||
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In the Wild | INOVM0001 | 20 | Mandatory | TB-1 | |
Enterprise Case | INOVM0014 | 20 | Mandatory | A,D | TB-1 |
Transdisciplinary Project 4: Going Wild | INOVM0026 | 40 | Mandatory | A | TB-2 |
Select 40 credit points from the list below. You should select 20 credit points from Teaching Block 1 units and 20 credit points from Teaching Block 2 units | |||||
Frontiers of Modern Physics A | PHYSM0049 | 20 | Optional | TB-1 | |
Frontiers of Modern Physics B | PHYSM0050 | 20 | Optional | TB-2 | |
Semiconductor Device Physics and Technology | PHYSM0048 | 20 | Optional | TB-1 | |
Nuclear Reactor Physics | PHYSM0046 | 20 | Optional | TB-2 | |
General Relativity and Cosmology | PHYSM0051 | 20 | Optional | TB-1 | |
Physics with Innovation (MSci) | 120 |
Unit Pass Mark for Undergraduate Programmes:
For details on the weightings for classifying undergraduate degrees, please see the Agreed Weightings, by Faculty, to be applied for the Purposes of Calculating the Final Programme Mark and Degree Classification in Undergraduate Programmes.
For detailed rules on progression please see the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes and the relevant faculty handbook.
Please refer to the specific progression/award requirements for programmes with a preliminary year of study, the Gateway programmes and International Foundation programmes.
All undergraduate degree programmes allow the opportunity for a student to exit from a programme with a Diploma or Certificate of Higher Education.
Integrated Master's degrees may also allow the opportunity for a student to exit from the programme with an equivalent Bachelor's degree where a student has achieved 360 credit points, of which 90 must be at level 6, and has successfully met any additional criteria as described in the programme specification.
The opportunities for a student to exit from one of the professional programmes in Veterinary Science, Medicine, and Dentistry with an Award is outlined in the relevant Programme Regulations (which are available as an annex in the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes).
An Ordinary degree can be awarded if a student has successfully completed at least 300 credits with a minimum of 60 credits at Level 6.
The pass mark for the professional programmes in Veterinary Science, Medicine and Dentistry is 50 out of 100. The classification of a degree in the professional programmes in Veterinary Science, Medicine, and Dentistry is provided in the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
The alternative classified honours degree of Arts (Physics with Innovation) (MSci) may be awarded on this programme. For further details please see the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes
Please note: This specification provides a concise summary of the main features of the programme and the learning outcomes that a typical student might reasonably be expected to achieve and demonstrate if he/she takes full advantage of the learning opportunities that are provided.
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