General OverviewThe events industry, in Scotland and beyond is growing at a rapid pace. At present, it is estimated that there are 530,000 people employed within the UK events sector, with events such as the 2012 London Olympics and 2015 Rugby World Cup bringing worldwide attention to the nation. In recent years Scotland has played host to the 2014 Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup and maintains a portfolio of annual events which includes T in the Park, Celtic Connections and the Edinburgh International Festival. These events contribute to a sector worth £36.1bn per year to the national economy. At a global level, nations the world over are increasingly recognising the value of events as a major element of development strategies and nation building projects with emerging economies such as Brazil (2014 FIFA World Cup, 2016 Olympics), Russia (2018 FIFA World Cup), China (2008 Olympics) and Qatar (2022 FIFA World Cup) pursuing hosting rights for mega-events. As events are increasingly recognised as a legitimate tool for stimulating development, the industry is quickly professionalising and requires a growing number of graduates to form an educated, critically informed workforce.
The MSc International Events Management is designed to meet this demand, producing critically informed, operationally capable practitioners through a flexible, student-centred delivery model. The aims of the programme are to develop graduates who demonstrate:
- a critical understanding of the historic, theoretical and conceptual body of knowledge relating to the production, consumption and regulation of international events.
- a critical understanding of the current key political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental issues which inform international events management and to apply such understandings to a wide range of events contexts and settings.
- a critical understanding of the range of practical and operational skills required to successfully deliver an event or portfolio of events.
- a range of complex analytical skills and abilities, including research skills, in order to critically examine existing practices within the events industry.
Students will be taught via an innovative learning, teaching and assessment strategy which makes use of video lectures, recorded conversations with academic and industry experts, and face to face tutorials. This alongside assignments which enable students to demonstrate their knowledge in settings closely related to practical situations and contexts helps produce graduates who are both transformed by their educational experience and capable of transforming the industry they serve.
Students, upon completion of the course, will have attained a Masters level qualification and may pursue additional postgraduate study or doctoral level both within the University and at other Higher Education Institutes. These may be either on a full time, part time or post experience basis.
Modules within the programme, with exception of work-based learning and dissertation modules, share a standard delivery model based around four hours of contact time per module per week, two hours of which are provided online and two hours of which are face to face delivery. The online content consists of one hour of traditional lecture content, delivered via video lecture. This hour provides the theoretical and conceptual knowledge and content for each module. The second recorded hour takes the form of a "conversation". In each conversation a relevant guest is invited to discuss an issue relevant to the outcomes of the module in question. The participants in these conversations may include practitioners, policy makers or guest academics relevant to the module area. These conversations are intended to contextualise the theoretical and conceptual content from the recorded lecture and expose students to a range of cases and settings to further develop their understanding of their sector. The final two hours take the form of a tutorial or workshop, delivered in a face to face setting. These sessions will make use of a variety of teaching tools including case studies, student-led presentations, discussion tasks and practical activities designed to enable students to take responsibility for their own learning and develop a rounded understanding of the subject matter. Each module is supported by further online content hosted via the University's virtual learning environment. This will include access to directed readings, online discussion fora, wiki sites and embedded content from a variety of other settings. Whilst directed readings and tasks will be provided via the CampusMoodle platform, students will be encouraged and expected to take responsibility for their own learning by contributing to the activities provided, making decisions about which additional content to access and uploading their own additional materials for distribution and discussion among the student body. The ethos underpinning assessment for the MSc International Events Management is that, wherever possible, assessment should be linked not only to the demonstration of theoretical and conceptual knowledge and skill-sets appropriate to the level of study, but also that it should aim to assess these in a context which reflects to practical nature of the industry into which students will graduate. As such, the MSc International Events Management programme makes use of a range of practically focused assignments, asking students to reports, case studies, portfolios, presentations and other assessment formats which will replicate the types of practice graduates will be expected to undertake in their typical working life upon completion of the programme.
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