Courses and assessment

Detailed information on the compulsory and elective courses of the MPH (on campus) programme

Courses

Over the course of your programme, you’ll complete a mix of core and optional courses and an independent dissertation. Courses use a variety of types of assessments, including essays, online activities, blogs, group work and tests. The assessments are designed to assess the learning outcomes of each course.

All students study the core courses (70 credits) and undertake a dissertation (60 credits). The remaining 50 course credits, needed for an MPH award, are then accumulated by the student's choice from a wide range of elective courses - listed below. Students may also acquire upto 30 credits from other relevant schools within the University, subject to approval of the course organiser within that school and the MPH Programme Co-Directors.

Core Courses

Course Name	Credits
Introduction to Epidemiology	10
Introduction to Qualitative Research	10
Introduction to Systematic Reviews	10
Introduction to Statistics	10
Principles of Public Health	10
Health Promotion	10
Epidemiology for Public Health	10
Research Design for Public Health	10

Link to details of compulsory courses

Elective courses

Course name	Credits
Communicable Disease Control and Environmental Health	10
Sociology of Health and Illness	20
Statistical Modelling	10
Investing in Global Health and Development	10
Global Health Epidemiology	10
Developing and Evaluating Complex Public Health Interventions	10
Introduction to Health Economics and Resource Allocation	10
Introduction to R for Public Health	20

Link to details of elective courses

We also offer students the option to take courses from other relative programmes. We will consider requests to substitute other relevant elective courses from different Deaneries or Schools elsewhere within the University for the courses in the MPH Electives on a case by case basis.

Although we endeavour to provide a wide range of optional courses to choose from, these can be subject to change or cancellation at short notice. Places on optional courses can be limited, due to course capacity and timetabling constraints. It may not be possible to guarantee every offer holder their top choice of optional courses.

Dissertation

The 60-credit dissertation course is designed to further develop the student's academic skills and ability to use scientific theory either in a research study or applied to public health practice. The dissertation project is designed to further develop the student's understanding of the processes and planning involved in undertaking research of a particular public health issue. This will develop their scientific and reflective written communication skills.

Link to details about the dissertation

Assessment

The course assessments are based on assignments, activities or course participation and there are no examinations during the course of the programme. Instructions for each assessment and the assessment criteria will be available in the course handbook at the start of each course. The assessments are normally due 10 days after the end of the course, although this may vary from course to course.

Assessment is a two-stage process. The taught component is assessed at the end of each teaching block in which the course is held. Progress to the dissertation is conditional on a good performance in continuous assessment at the first attempt.

All courses will have formative feedback or feed-forward event and each course will have one or more summative assignments.

Formative assessments: these include assessed discussion board contributions, blogs, journals, group presentations, etc. You will receive formative feedback on these which will help you prepare your summative assessment(s) at the end of the course.
Summative assessments: these include longer assignments, e.g. essays, reports, or group work tasks to be submitted at the end of the course.
Each course will have different methods of assessment and assessment criteria, and the weight of each assessment will vary from course to course. Information on the various methods of assessment will be provided in individual course handbooks.

Marking Scheme

The University’s common postgraduate marking scheme is used for degree assessment.

Degree regulations

Students must comply with any assessment requirements specific to their degree programme and the University’s taught assessment regulations for the current academic session.

This article was published on 2024-05-13