BSc (Hons) Software Engineering with Professional Placement Bachelor's degree at Falmouth University

You'll learn the principles of computing, discrete mathematics, statistics and technical communication. Through a series of tasks, you'll begin to use core computer science concepts, techniques and methods to solve practical problems and leverage algorithms in your solutions. You'll also delve into the history of computing, engaging with the plurality of voices in the profession and the controversies evoked by algorithmic bias.

You will explore digital media formats including text, image and sound. You'll play, tinker, experiment with and extend digital artefacts, transforming what already exists in one form into another form as a means of appropriation. You will then integrate your digital artefacts with digital game technologies, notably game engines, to make them interactive in some way. You'll also consider moral and legal questions surrounding digital creativity, such as plagiarism, intellectual property law, lice

You'll gain foundational experience of the basic principles, terminology, roles and tools used in the development of digital products and services. Through several small-scale team projects, you'll practice a range of prototyping methods and pitch your idea for a future project. These projects will help you to develop your project management skills, while building a professional, inclusive and supportive studio culture.

You'll learn the fundamentals of the data science life cycle. This will include learning how to formulate questions, collect and clean data, explore and visualise data, make statistical inferences and predictions, and report insights in a way that informs decision making. You'll also gain an awareness of the responsibilities, obligations and legalities of working with sensitive and personal data, including its collection, storage, analysis, management and transmission.

You'll refine your approach to computer programming by developing an architecturally sound project focused on object-orientated solutions. Through this project, you'll build your confidence with various interfaces that enable interaction within and across different system components. You'll practice more disciplined software engineering methodologies, develop your mastery of the notations for describing and refactoring system architectures, and apply the mathematics associated with circuit desig

This module introduces resource-efficient methods for designing robust, sustainable logic systems. You will study digital electronics with a focus on low-level logic, covering fundamental gates and the principles behind hardware such as CPUs and GPUs. Practical workshops will develop your ability to design, test and debug digital systems using standard logic ICs and programmable gate arrays, considering real-world constraints like timing and noise margins. Working in teams, you will design and d

Assessment: Assessment focuses on your individual contribution throughout the module.

Throughout this module, you'll practice and develop your computing skills with a focus on the design and analysis of algorithms. You'll explore strategies for creating efficient and optimised code; learning to apply methods of profiling and resource management. You'll also be challenged to consider sustainability as a theme for your optimisations, with attention to maximising the use and/or extending the lifecycle of hardware that is difficult to recycle, to reduce (notional) energy usage and to

You'll learn key mathematic principles that underpin computing, such as linear algebra, geometry, trigonometry, 3D transformation, and calculus. You'll then apply these principles to your own technical work. You'll also investigate the relationship between computational mathematics and cybersecurity. By exploring security topics such as common threats and attack vectors, cryptography and steganography, certification and malware, as well as defensive programming.

You'll adopt a design thinking approach to software development. This will involve a renewed focus on conveying your design ideas using modelling languages, and evaluating your designs through different lenses, for example, information, behaviour, structure, domain, function, and enterprise modelling. You compare your designs using relevant analytic techniques and consider the different architectures that software can follow. In particular, investigating the merits and flaws of different approac

You'll explore the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. Considering real-world applications, you'll conduct a practical research and development project looking to address a specific brief or challenge. Through this work, you'll get a chance to think about the legal, social, ethical, professional and sustainability implications of AI technologies. You'll also examine how artificial intelligence and machine learning may impact computer technolog

You will explore strategies for planning, tracking, testing, and deploying codebases in a way that will continue to scale as the lifecycle progresses and investment increases. In particular, adopting continuous integration and deployment alongside version control practices. You will develop your knowledge of distributed systems, computer networks, server infrastructure, quality assurance, and the orchestration of non-trivial production processes. You will also be challenged to consider security

Embedded systems constitute multiple interacting components which might include sensors, actuators, various electronic circuits, mechatronics, and physical mechanisms. You will explore the design, engineering, and operation of embedded computer systems with particular attention to real-time processing and interfacing with computer hardware. You will also need to consider the protocols and network technologies that facilitate system component distribution. Topics span: input/output; discretisatio

You will identify an opportunity to improve the software production process, devising a tool that will refine developer workflows. Contexts can vary, but could include utilities for development operations, standalone computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools, debugging extensions for an integrated development environment (IDE), content pipeline automation utilities that leverage generative artificial intelligence, or similar. You will need to explore contemporary software engineering prac