Three points in the year at which a cohort opens
- January
- May
- September
What a cohort is, and how a supervisor is attached to it
A cohort is formed of no more than twelve candidates and runs for twelve teaching weeks from the start point at which it opened. It is held at that size because every candidate is supervised individually alongside the taught programme, and supervision is the part of the work that does not scale.
Each candidate is allocated a supervisor during the first week. The allocation is made against the working subject of the independent project, so that the reading a candidate is set and the questions a supervisor asks are pointed at one problem from the beginning. Where a project moves substantially in the first four weeks, the allocation is reviewed once, and the outcome of that review is confirmed to the candidate in writing.
The cohort meets as a single group for taught sessions and works in supervisor pairs for everything else. Attendance at taught sessions is recorded. Where a candidate misses a session, the session materials and a written account of what the group covered are issued to that candidate before the following week opens.
How a taught module is built across its weeks
A taught module occupies four consecutive weeks of the cohort and is delivered as four sessions of three hours. Three modules run in sequence across the twelve weeks, and each is closed before the next opens, so a candidate is never carrying two module reading lists at once.
Reading is issued one week ahead of the session it belongs to. Each week carries one set text and two supporting items, and candidates are expected to have read the set text in full and at least one supporting item before the session begins. Sessions are run as seminars against that reading and are not a restatement of it, which is why the reading is treated as a condition of attendance and not as an optional extension.
Where a candidate joins the cohort in the first week of a module, the earlier reading of that module is issued in the same package. In each case the module handbook states the set texts for all four of its weeks at the point the module opens, so a candidate can read ahead across the whole module where the working pattern of that candidate favours it.
Written work, and the week it sits in
Assessment is distributed across the twelve weeks so that reading and writing fall in the same week and are prepared together. A week in which a submission falls carries a lighter reading load, and a week without a submission carries the heavier one; the two strands are the two halves of a single week and are planned as one thing.
Six pieces of assessed work are set. A position note of eight hundred to one thousand words is submitted in the first week. A reading log of about twelve hundred words follows in the third. Two essays of three thousand to three thousand five hundred words are submitted in the fifth and the tenth weeks. A project proposal of fifteen hundred to two thousand words is submitted in the eighth week, and a portfolio drawing the taught work together, of around five thousand words, closes the twelve weeks.
Written feedback is normally returned within fifteen working days of the submission deadline, as marginal comment against the script together with a summary judgement. Where a piece is returned outside that window, the candidate is told the revised return date before the original one passes. Marks are provisional until they are confirmed by the assessment review, and candidates are told which of the two they are looking at whenever a mark is issued.
The twelve weeks, read strand by strand
The table below sets the twelve teaching weeks of a cohort against the three strands a week is built from. Every cell can be selected, with a pointer or from the keyboard, and the panel beside the table then describes what that strand asks of a candidate in that week.
| Wk | Taught | Reading | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | |||
| 2 | |||
| 3 | |||
| 4 | |||
| 5 | |||
| 6 | |||
| 7 | |||
| 8 | |||
| 9 | |||
| 10 | |||
| 11 | |||
| 12 |
Week 1 · Taught session
Orientation
The cohort meets as one group, the twelve-week map is issued, and the first module opens with its framing session.
Setting a programme against its notional hours
Credit at post-graduate level is expressed in notional hours of learning, and one credit stands for ten notional hours of a candidate’s time. That constant is fixed by the national credit framework and is not a figure this company sets. Everything else in the calculation below is supplied by whoever is reading it: the number of modules taken, the credit weight of each, the length of the cohort in weeks and the contact hours a week carries.
The arithmetic is printed line by line so that it can be checked. It resolves the total notional hours of a programme and the share of those hours falling outside taught contact; it is a planning figure derived from the four numbers entered, and it is neither a statement of a candidate’s registered credit nor the timetable of any cohort this company runs.
- Notional hours per credit
- 10, a fixed constant
- Total credits, being modules × credits per module
- 4 × 20 = 80
- Total notional hours, being total credits × 10
- 80 × 10 = 800
- Contact hours across the cohort, being contact per week × weeks
- 6 × 12 = 72
- Independent study, being notional hours − contact hours
- 800 − 72 = 728
Supervision of the independent project, and the milestones it passes
The independent research project runs alongside the taught weeks and continues after they close. Supervision is delivered as scheduled meetings of one hour with the allocated supervisor, held fortnightly during the taught weeks and monthly after them, and a written record of each meeting is placed on the candidate’s supervisory file.
Four milestones govern the project. The working question and the outline method are agreed in the fourth week. The proposal is submitted in the eighth week and is either accepted or returned for one revision. Where a project involves human participants, personal records or fieldwork on a third party’s premises, a governance and ethics check is completed before any evidence is gathered, and the project does not proceed to that stage until the check is recorded as complete. A full draft is read by the supervisor in the closing stage, and the comment on that draft is the last formal comment a candidate receives before submission.
A supervisor reads and comments on one full draft and on one chapter-length extract in addition to it. Further reading of drafts is a matter for the supervisor to agree with the candidate. Where a candidate needs to suspend study, the suspension is recorded against the cohort file and the remaining milestones are re-dated from the point of return, so that the sequence of the four milestones is preserved.