Management at Durham is often found paired with another degree subject. Me personally, I study ‘Marketing and Management.’ What this means is that I have particular focus on the marketing side of the degree, but with modules surrounding Management topics. In my first year, this presented itself as 2 out of my 6 core modules being management-orientated. In my time, that was ‘People, Management and Organisations’ where we looked at how to manage a workforce and successfully motivate and work with a team, and ‘Finance for Managers’ where we were taught basic finance analysis and how to apply this in a management setting.
With both of these modules, I was assessed on an assignment basis, which meant that I was given a formative assessment midway through the term that facilitated my understanding for the summative assessment. The summative assessment would be due at the end of the term. I found this to be a much more desirable way of examination as it gave me the chance to be given feedback for my formative assessment that I could apply to my summative work.
Huge lectures = more people to meet
Because the Management modules are open to a lot of the Business School students, they were some of my biggest lectures so far. However, as I have progressed through my university career, for my course in particular, they became an optional module so consequently decreased a little in size. But don’t let the size put you off choosing this course, as the lecturers, as always, are regularly on hand to help you with any queries you might have. In my experience, they ensure that students are very aware of their ‘office hours’ and actively encourage us to make use of this time they make available to answer our questions.
Wider reading and personal research
We would also have time to have a more personal relationship with the module leader in the weekly seminars, often a place where we would reinforce our understanding from the lectures and how this can be utilised to a high degree in our assignment. In a typical week, I have had one 2-hour lecture accompanied by the one-hour seminar per module, so this left a lot of time for wider reading and personal research into the subject area.
Spaghetti, tape and marshmallows
One of my favourite memories from a management seminar, is being put in teams and given spaghetti, tape and marshmallows to build the tallest tower we could. While this may seem a little strange, we actually then paired it with research on types of teams and people who completed the challenge to the highest degree and theories as to why this could have been. This type of learning is why I loved this course, because our team had an amazing time in that seminar and we still learnt key knowledge that I then applied in my final assignment at the end of the term.
So many reasons to choose Durham
The great thing about this course at Durham is that it attracts such a wide variety of lecturers from across the globe that are all very passionate about their subject area. They are always very willing and open to discussing their subject with you and, in my experience, have been very supportive in aiding us through our summative assignments. This is definitely a reason to consider joining this University. For me, the main reason I decided to come here was because I wanted to stay relatively close to home, and with such a highly ranking Business School on my doorstep, it seemed like the obvious choice for me.
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