Final year option

In your final year, you will complete an independent study project totalling 40 credits. We offer three optional modules to help you fulfil this requirement within Liberal Arts and Sciences. You are also free to base your independent study project wholly within your Major.

Interdisciplinary Research Project – 20 or 40 credits

This project option develops focused engagement with the interdisciplinarity which is at the heart of the Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences approach to learning. The end product will reflect your unique pathway through your LANS degree and express your experience of working across disciplinary boundaries, demonstrating your ability to contemplate thoughtprovoking questions, engage in innovative approaches to knowledge, and to seek creative solutions to a range of debates.   

Your research focuses on a topic or problem rooted in interdisciplinary study and, generally, it will be one you define yourself. The exception will be if you wish to conduct research wholly within and across the natural sciences, where projects are typically first articulated by academic staff. Once you have generated your idea you will consult with a supervisor to define its parameters with reference to current scholarship and knowledge. Once this stage is completed you will design the project and conclude by producing a substantial portfolio of independent research.  

You can take a 40 credit or 20 credit LANS independent research project. If you choose the latter, then you will be required to take an additional 20 credits of independent study work. This might be fulfilled through your Major area, or by taking both of the LANS Entrepreneurial Skills modules.  

Learning Entrepreneurial Skills  Semester One – 20 credits

 The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – people who are creative, inventive and discoverers” - Jean Piaget

An enterprising and entrepreneurial mindset and skills is highly prized by employers globally, and ensure that you are able to compete at a high level within the graduate labour market. This module will help you to become enterprising in your approach to problems by enabling you to develop abilities, behaviours and qualities to ‘make things happen’. Through engagement with a range of experts and hands-on activities you will strengthen your skills in approaching challenges in a creative and resourceful way.   

Working in teams, and through research, business-plan creation, and a pitch of the business plan, this module supports your development as a: 

  • Creative, enterprising and transformative thinker
  • Skilful and technologically astute problem solver
  • Persuasive communicator
  • Globally and locally aware citizen
  • Confident, flexible lifelong learner
  • Resilient and dynamic leader 

Entrepreneurial Start-Up  Semester Two – 20 credits

 I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game's winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that's why I succeed.”Michael Jordan

Your business plan has successfully been pitched, what next? Students now explore product viability through to launch. The actual product launch is not embedded in the module, but you can of course pursue this outside of your studies.   

You receive initial practical training in how to demonstrate entrepreneurial skills, and engage in independent guided learning as part of a team, collaborating on the design, planning, and viabilitytesting phases. Your progress through this module is supported and guided by the University’s outstanding Careers Network team.  

Throughout your learning journey on these modules, you will benefit from the expertise and guidance of our external partners, which in 2017/2018 included: international technology companies (IBM, Google), local Start-up accelerators (Entrepreneurial Spark, BizzInn) and investor firms (Midven, Blue Sky finance).