Master Health and Social Care, Student Designed Award
Entry requirementsYou will need to negotiate a programme of study, and to have this approved by the School of Health and Social Care, before admission to the programme. Initial enquiries should be made directly to the Programme Administrator. You may be eligible for sponsorship to undertake the programme through your local strategic health authority, your employer, or another source. Self-funding students are also welcome to apply. Details of your funding arrangements will be required prior to enrolment on the programme. Applicants whose first language is not English must demonstrate that their level of English is appropriate for study at postgraduate level. This level is outlined in the Oxford Brookes University postgraduate regulations
Academic titleMA / MSc / PGDip / PGCert Health and Social Care, Student Designed Award
Course descriptionMA / MSc / PGDip / PGCert
The innovative Student Designed Award (SDA), offered by the School of Health and Social Care is part of Oxford Brookes University’s Open Award scheme.
The SDA is multi-professional course open to a very wide range of professionals and non-professionals, who work in health or social care settings, including anaesthetics and recovery practitioners, care home practitioners, complementary therapists, doctors, health care educators, health care technicians, midwives, nurses (all branches), occupational therapists, physiotherapists, practice managers, psychotherapists, radiographers and social workers.
The SDA offers a very flexible study option, which allows you to build your own award if you have been unable to find a course that meets your specific requirements or, you wish to plan a course that builds on your previous learning and focuses on your own personal and professional needs. Your programme of study is individually negotiated, named by you and your tutor and approved by the School of Health and Social Care at Oxford Brookes University. Through the accumulation of academic credit, you can be recommended for an award. This could be a postgraduate certificate, postgraduate diploma, or master's degree.
Course content
The SDA’s distinctive course design provides you with maximum flexibility and allows your learning to be directly related to your career and clinical interests. You can choose from a very wide range of existing modules in the health and social care portfolio and add academic credit for learning from projects, or other workplace activities to build your individual programme. Prior learning from experience or accredited courses may also be included if it is relevant to your agreed objectives. For example, you may want to combine modules from the Critical and Specialist Care course with those from the Cancer and Palliative Care degree, or you may wish to combine the study of women’s health with community care and clinical governance, or management, leadership and education. The options if not quite limitless are very extensive.
Your programme may therefore contain all or any of the following:
* credit gained from previous certificated courses of study, or modules
* learning through experience
* taught modules that can be selected from a wide range of options
* work-based learning projects
* units studied at another institution.
When selecting the elements of your programme, you will be guided by a tutor, to ensure you meet the aims you have identified. A programme of achieved credit and planned study must be coherent, in that all the parts must relate to each other and must be directly relevant to the title of the award sought. You will be asked to write a statement that justifies the combination of prior credit and the modules chosen.
Teaching, learning and assessment
The teaching, learning and assessment strategies are determined by the content of the planned programme. In the case of work-based learning or independent study, these are negotiated between you and your tutor and, if relevant, your employer.