Foundation Year in Business, Finance and Accounting

The Foundation Year is intended to provide a bridging role between pre-university study and the academic rigour of an undergraduate degree.

The Foundation Year gives you a fundamental knowledge of mathematics, statistics, economics, business management, finance and accounting to ensure that you are fully prepared to enter Programme Stage 1 of any of the Business Management, Finance, and Accounting and Finance - related degrees at Bayes.

• Provide you with a foundational education in business, finance and accounting, including concepts, theories, methodologies and techniques to develop a basic understanding of organisations and markets, their major functions, their management and the changing external environment in which they operate.

• Develop your skills to enable you to tackle problems through an appreciation of cultural, political, economic and technological issues.

• Provide you with an interdisciplinary intellectual framework, together with a familiarity with both literate and numerate modes of thought, analysis and expression.

• Develop your hard skills which deal with technical or administrative procedures related to an organisation’s core business and soft skills (people skills) linked to how people relate to each other: communicating, listening, engaging in dialogue, giving feedback, cooperating as a team member, solving problems, as well as personal self-reflection and self-awareness.

• Equip you with the ability to work and think both independently, as well as part of a team, in solving problems faced by the business community.

• Develop you into a responsible, ethical and socially aware business person or manager.

Assessment is carried out according to context and purpose and recognises that you may exhibit different aptitudes in different forms of assessment. You will therefore be assessed in a variety of ways which allow development of a range of learning and teaching styles. These will prepare you for the assessments you will undertake on progressing to the degree programme.

Most modules are assessed by both coursework and an exam.

Coursework can include:

• Essays or reports which you can take home and complete with the aid of your notes.

• Class tests.

• Online quizzes and tests using the Virtual Learning Environment.

• Individual and group presentations.

• Group projects, sometimes based on case studies.

• An individual project, which is a piece of work where research skills are developed.

The format and timing of coursework varies considerably between different modules.

The term ‘formative assessment’ refers to assessment where you are expected to act on feedback and take it into account in subsequent coursework or exams. Some modules contain a considerable amount of formative assessment, where you will need to carry out coursework at various stages during the module. In such cases the coursework comprises a succession of separate activities. Where a module includes several components to the coursework this does not imply that you are expected to put more effort into the module than would be the case for a module with a single piece of coursework, but you will need to spread that effort across a term.

Formal unseen written exams take place at the end of each term (or at the end of the year, if a module is taught over both terms).