By Alex Martinsmith
When I first applied to study business, I was really unsure as to what area I would like to focus my learning on.
In the first year the Management School provide a very rounded view of business management with modules covering every aspect of the discipline. Because of the fact I didn’t really understand what I wanted to focus on before university, it was definitely helpful that the Management School gave me a broad scope of modules in first year. Now I’m in second year, I can use my experience of the different topics I studied in first year to select the modules I want to study this year.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the modules I studied in first year:
ECN101 – Business Economics
An introduction to basic economic principles and theories. It’s come in handy numerous times in my other modules and is useful knowledge for life in general. Although not hugely advanced economics, it does require a bit of work to get your head around some of the topics, especially if you’ve not done economics before at A Level. This module only lasts half a semester.
MGT120 – Introduction to Behaviour at Work
As with ECN101, MGT120 lasts for half a semester. It runs through some of the core theories regarding organisation behaviour and draws on sociological and psychological work. It covers topics such as work structure and organisation, scientific management and misbehaviour at work.
MGT133 – Accounting and Finance for Managers
Provides a comprehensive understanding of accounting for business management students. It covers everything from simple cash flow forecasts and other financial documents right up to accounting rules and regulations and asset management. Coming from someone who had never done accounting before, it was very well explained and easy to understand when it we ran through it in seminars. It also helps get to grips with some of the terms used in business management when referring to accounting.
MGT134 – Business Management in Context
This module covers some of the important themes that managers encounter in business, mainly focusing on ethics and corporate social responsibility. This is a topic that is becoming ever more prominent in business and some of the issues covered are really interesting; such as the treatment of animals by McDonald’s.
MGT136 – Management Themes and Perspectives
The themes and perspectives covered in this module include marketing, strategy and supply chain and logistics. These all become separate core modules in second year and so this module gives you a useful grounding in the subjects. The module is assessed by writing an assignment for each topic. The frameworks and principles used in each of these areas are used frequently in other modules in both first and second year.
MGT138 – Analysis for Decision Making
This is a statistics based module that revolves around calculations for investment and finance. The topics themselves are relevant to any business career and are explained thoroughly. As someone who only did maths to GCSE level I didn’t struggle in this module at all and can genuinely say that it has come in useful a lot more than I thought it would.
MGT139 – Professional Self Management
A module designed to help business students become more employable by focusing on things like CV writing, skills development and employment processes. As someone who has just been through the recruitment process for a placement, I can say that this module was invaluable. I had no idea what an assessment centre even before studying this module and I’ve managed to secure a placement for next year with Boeing.
MGT140 – Business Challenges
This is your only optional module in first year. It can be swapped out for an unrestricted module which is basically a module of any other subject in the university such as History, French, Sociology, Politics etc. A majority of students tend to pick Business Challenges though. This module runs four students- run challenges that are to be completed in groups over the course of the first semester. My task was called ‘Steelers Challenge’: we had to design and then execute a marketing campaign to sell tickets to the Sheffield Steelers Ice Hockey games to the student market. This module is really hands on and is a totally different learning style to the rest of the course.
Click here if you would like to see the course structure.