Here are a few things I feel would be helpful to share with those of you who may be planning to start studying Management and Marketing. This is a collection of things that I have ‘noted’ during my first year.
Do I need those books?
You may find yourself asking this question. I thought it would be best that I had the books recommended by the lecturer. However, soon enough you will find out that there is a lot of reading material and sometimes only a few chapters will be relevant to you. Therefore, it isn’t worth buying all the books. Instead I would recommend using the library to take out the necessary books. Don’t feel shy when it comes to requesting books either, if the library don’t have the books that you are after, you can always request they order them. I have used this service few times; the only slight issue is that it may take a month for you to receive the book so make sure you request in advance.
How do I prepare for my exams?
Coming out of 6th form or college you were likely to have read over the specification for the subjects you were studying. At university there isn’t a specification, this was something that took me a while to get over. I found that attending the revision lectures near the end of the term really helped to organize the information over the course in a really simplified way. Sometimes lectures may give you access to an example paper make sure you pay very close attention to the questions and practice them a few times.
How many societies do I sign up to?
Sign up to as many things as you are interested, I just wanted to highlight the importance of going to the taster sessions even If that means attending alone. The taster sessions will help you decide if you would enjoy being a part of the society, then you can decide if you want to pay for membership. I might have got carried away with paying for memberships to things I hadn’t attended the taster sessions to. If you do this you will likely be waiting on a refund and maybe still waiting till this day…
Hope this was helpful, if you have any things you have noted over your first year leave them in the comments below.
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Hello Hemali,
Thank you very much for your response and the time that you took to share this information with me 🙂
The courses that you have mentioned above seem somewhat different to the courses that are shown on the website. I would greatly appreciate it if you could please tell me if these are the same that you have described above?
Year 1 Modules
– Business finance and reporting (is this the one that requires math?)
– Economy and society
– Employment relations
– Information management
– Management inquiry and analysis
– Management theory and debate
– Principles of marketing
– Work and society
Hello Hemali,
I am an international student.I am interested in the Management BA course. I wanted to know more about it. I absolutely HATE math and I was wondering if I needed any Mathematical skills in order to be successful in this course? I have also read a little bit about the course on the UOL website however it doesn’t give me a detailed description about the course and what I would be expecting to be learning for example; it doesn’t specify the kind of exams (multiple choice, written essay) nor does It provide information on the type and wording of the essays for example it would say essay(50%) but it does not say how many words the essay would be of.
I would really appreciate it if I could obtain more information about the grading of this course and the amount of words per essay assignment (approximately) I would also like to know more about how many words the dissertation would be and also more about MATHS this is very important.
Thanking you in advance
Hello Inaara,
There are a few mathematical based courses within the first year which are ‘Introduction to accounting and Finance’ and ‘Statistics.’ However the standard of mathematical skill required is equivalent to high school education therefore it is not very complex.
I can try to give you more of an in sight by describing my first year, I hope this answers your question.
2017/8 SEM1 CO1098 Information Management – This was 100% coursework
2017/8 SEM1 MN1000 Foundations of Management – This involved two pieces of essay coursework the first was worth 10% and was around 700 words this was useful as it gives the opportunity to learn what is expected for the next piece which was worth 30% with a word count of 1,700 and finally the course work which was worth 60%. There was no multiple choice for this examination it was based around essay writing. To give you an idea of what we had learned the following is a few things which we looked into; Bureaucracy and Ethics, Who Creates Value – Entrepreneurs or Workers and The Neoliberal Economy.
2017/8 SEM1 MN1014 Economics for Management – This was 50% coursework (2,000 words) and 50% examination, the examination did hold a few multiple choice options. Examples of things studied are The neoclassical take on markets, globalisation and money, debt and finance.
2017/8 SEM2 CO1961 Understanding and Using Statistical Information – This was 100% exam based with a limited amount of multiple choice questions.
2017/8 SEM2 MN1002 Introduction to Marketing – This was 50% group coursework and 50% examination with no multiple choice options. A few exampled of things we studied involved ‘Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning’, International marketing and Buyer Behaviour.
2017/8 SEM2 MN1010 Introduction to Accountancy – This was 50% coursework and 50% examination, the coursework was split into 3 sections the first two did involve some mathematical understanding though this was taught during our lectures and reinforced during our seminars.
2017/8 Both MN1009 Foundations of Knowledge – Over the 2 semesters we had 4 pieces of coursework that were 25% the majority of these assessments were completed in group work and varied between each other.
Most examinations taken were primarily essay based questions, more commonly with the options to select from a small range.
Hope that helps!
– Hemali
Hello Hemali,
Thank you very much for your response and the time that you took to share this information with me ?
The courses that you have mentioned above seem somewhat different to the courses that are shown on the website. I would greatly appreciate it if you could please tell me if these are the same that you have described above?
Year 1 Modules
– Business finance and reporting (is this the one that requires math?)
– Economy and society
– Employment relations
– Information management
– Management inquiry and analysis
– Management theory and debate
– Principles of marketing
– Work and society
Hello Hemali,
Thank you so much for your help :). I reckon that there are a few changes in the modules that you covered and the modules that are now being displayed on the UOL website, is it possible for you to help me understand if these are the same? or if they require the same amount of maths? I would also love to be given module outlines. Is it possible for you to help me with that?
Thank you very much,
Inaara
Hi Inaara,
I’ve had a look online at https://le.ac.uk/courses/management-studies-ba/2019 and yes you are right the modules I covered have changed. Sorry I should have had a look first! I have attempted to look for more deatiled module outlines online but I haven’t been successful. However Information management and Principles of marketing seem to have remained very similar and the more mathematical based modules seem to have been removed from the first year.
Hope that was helpful!
Hemali 🙂