Apprenticeship Digital User Experience (Ux) Professional Degree Apprenticeship

Program Overview

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Course Overview

This apprenticeship offers you the opportunity to study a range of topics, from the creation of, and the practical approaches of design and user-centred research. You will be able to develop your understanding of the role UX design plays in creating user-friendly digital products and services and learn how to apply research and evaluation in your UX design projects.

On this course you will...

• Learn how to create user-friendly digital products or services
• Understand how to enhance user experience of existing products or services
• Foster critical thinking and research skills to influence design and usability
• Learn how to manage design-led projects in a commercial setting
• Design and lead user-experience focused projects

Key Details

• Recruiting to: UK / RoI / Settled in UK
• Course Location: Carlisle - Brampton Road
• Institute: Institute of Education, Arts and Society
• Delivery Style: Blended
• Course Duration: Full-time: 3 Years
• Course Start Point: September
• Award: Apprenticeship

Course Structure

What you will learn

The programme is designed to train people to the occupational standard of professional Digital UX and meet the digital design needs of industry. The course and its End Point Assessment (EPA) has been designed to be completed in three years and successful apprentices will qualify with a L6 Apprenticeship and BA Digital User Experience (UX) degree.

Year one

• Introduction to Visual Communication This will introduce you to the concept of exploiting visual communication across different digital and physical media, including key software tools and techniques to expand your ability to produce compelling creative work.
• Digital Skills and Technologies for the Web As a basis for understanding the potential in building online user experiences, you will be able to experience coding in the essential tools for bringing your designs to life and learn how to plan and deliver a well-structured outcome for your target audience.
• Introduction to Digital UX Design This will allow you to start to explore in more depth the fundamental components that combine to produce highly usable interaction designs, introduce design methodology, user profiling, wire-framing, prototyping and techniques of critical evaluation.
• Managing Design In this module, you will be introduced to the principles of managing the design process within a business context, and how to champion the value of UX design as a driver for innovation, including ethical and legal responsibilities.

Year two

• The Digital Studio Building on your work in Year 1, you will be able to consider the different roles working in the professional landscape, such as user research, user interface design, usability testing, information architecture, and visual design, and the complementary skills involved
• Professional Development – Leadership, & Team Working Project teams rely on complementary skills and knowledge, and this module will expose you to the theory of team composition, and the characteristics of effective team performance and how to develop your own capacity to influence when working on group projects.
• Collaborative Design Structured corporate design activity and decision-making requires working with others to achieve high-quality goals. The collaborative project environment will develop your confidence and ability to communicate and present in a professional manner.
• User Behaviour and Interactive Data Visualisation The aim of the module is for you to gain an understanding of how users interact with data visualisations, and how to improve the design. You will also look in more depth at user needs in order create interactive solutions as part of intensifying your understanding of user-centred design.
• Live Creative Digital Practice This is an opportunity to bring your learned skills and knowledge together into an extensive project that shows your capacity to identify, research, define, visualise, execute, and critically evaluate an extended UX project.

Year three

• Advanced Research Project for Digital UX Design Practice The discipline of UX Design requires the capacity to undertake structured research across several different facets, as a prelude to making, or improving, design decisions. This module enables you, in discussion with your Tutor and your employer, to consider a specific area of investigation that is of particular interest or relevance to you, your role, and your potential career path in UX Design
• Advanced Digital UX Design Project Having produced an extensive research proposal in the previous module, this is the opportunity for you to use it as the basis to experience taking overall responsibility for leadership, decision-making and production of a major UX project to a professional standard, and to synthesise and display your knowledge and skills already explored in previous modules.
• Leadership & Applied Project Management: CPD and Portfolio This final module will provide a deeper excursion into more advanced project management techniques including stakeholder management, risk management, cost-benefit concerns, time-estimation, and document production.

Teaching & Assessment

How you will learn

You will attend university on campus or online one day a week across an academic semester of 12 weeks covering two to three academic modules. The rest of your time will be in work, where you will apply the skills and knowledge you have gained to your real-world user experience design task in employment and use this experience to complete course assessments.

A variety of teaching and learning methods and strategies are used to ensure ongoing development and transfer of knowledge and understanding. You will be given opportunities to experience flexible and creative approaches to teaching and learning, to help foster independent learning. Over the course of your studies, you will experience a variety of teaching methodologies which will include lectures, seminars, practical works and remote learning via our virtual learning environment. You will be taught by knowledgeable lecturers, most of whom have gained significant professional industry experience before their careers in education.

Our campus's location in Brampton Road allows us to access a large studio space, and specialist design technology.

While most assessment is individual, there will be opportunities for group working, this will help you develop collaborative and organisational skills ready for the workplace.

At your apprenticeship workplace, work-integrated learning will take place with active support by us who set and mark assignments that are designed to draw together your professional and academic learning. Your tutors will liaise with you and your employer to ensure your opportunities for professional and academic development are the best they can be.

There will also be the requirement for ‘off the job training’, which is defined as learning that takes place outside your normal day-to-day working environment, but in your normal work hours, and leads specifically towards the achievement of an apprenticeship. This may include training delivered in the usual place of work that is not delivered as part of your normal working duties. ‘Off the job training’ must be directly related to the relevant Apprenticeship Standards for the profession. Examples of ‘off-the-job’ training could include, but may not be restricted to:

• teaching of theory (lectures, role play, simulation exercises, online learning, manufacturer training • practical training (shadowing, mentoring, industry visits) • learning support and time spent writing assessments/assignments.

The minimum amount of off-the-job learning for any apprenticeship is 20% but the actual amount required by you to complete the apprenticeship is set out in the commitment statement.

How you will be assessed

Our assessment strategy means that your tutors will:

• provide innovative, challenging and stimulating assessment which will enable you to develop the knowledge and professional skills required for employment, • be student-centred, flexible and modern in both content and approach, • be fully supported by and integrated with technological approaches such as the Blackboard virtual learning environment (VLE), • impart academic rigour to the teaching and learning processes, • support the development of independence, autonomy and self-reflection, • support learners’ needs at different stages of development.

Consequently, we employ a wide range of different assessment methods appropriate to the needs of the module and its content. The range of assessment we employ includes:

• computer-based assessments, • problem-solving exercises (both of a practical and written format), • devising plans, based on the collection and analysis of information, • oral, audio-visual and poster presentations, • group work, • project proposals.

Throughout the programme, your employer will have an important role to play in supporting assessment, in particular suggesting topics and providing feedback on formative assessment. It is a requirement for the apprenticeship programme that you maintain a portfolio of completed assessed academic work and workplace activities to provide evidence of your achievements and capabilities.

Entry Requirements

• GCSEs: This should be GCSE Maths and English at C/4 or above. Functional Skills Level 2 in English and maths and Adult Literacy and Numeracy are also accepted.
• UCAS Tariff points: 104 – 120

Selection Criteria

Individual employers will set the selection criteria for their Apprenticeships. Most will have A levels (or equivalent). Other relevant qualifications or prior experience may also be considered as an alternative.

Funding

Funding for the apprenticeship is provided through the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and is paid in the following way:

• Levy paying employers with sufficient funds in their digital account – 100% funding.
• Non-levy payers – 95% ESFA funding, 5% Employer co-funding. Non-levy paying companies will be asked to pay their 5% of the full cost of the apprenticeship at the start of the programme.

Non-levy-paying organisations must register on the government's Digital Apprenticeship Service and reserve funds for their apprenticeship prior to the programme starting, unless they are being funded by levy-transfer.

All apprentices must be interviewed, assessed and offered a position by an employer before being admitted to the apprenticeship programme. Although we may receive direct enquires and filter these before passing to prospective employers, apprentices must apply directly via an employer. After acceptance by an employer, we will require a formal application, which will be assessed according to the programme entry criteria.