On an engineering degree programme, for example, students may take on a project producing computer models and working prototypes. Recreation management students may find themselves visiting tourist spots to analyse and report on issues affecting their management and promotion. Construction and surveying students may find themselves on site learning the nuts and bolts of project management. Some postgraduate courses include projects based around your current working environment so you can apply your studies to the analysis and solution of real problems in your working life. In this way we can tie the theoretical to the practical in a way that is meaningful to you and bring a tangible and immediate benefit to you and your organisation.
Distance learning is a way of tackling learning rather than a type of study task.
It involves following a study package in your own time, in your own home that is carefully and rigorously structured to develop new, specialist skills. The package is supported by the supervision of specialist tutors who assess and provide feedback on the work you submit. Typically there will be short, intensive periods called contact phases during a distance learning course where students and tutors meet up, often in a residential setting. These contact phases may be once or twice a year and are not always in Sheffield. We have a number of students following courses in the Middle and Far East, for instance, and we arrange for the contact phases to take place in their own country.