Frequently asked questions

At each level in UK higher education, students are expected to be able to engage with progressively more challenging learning. In England, a Batchelor’s degree normally covers levels 4 5 and 6, and a Master’s degree is level 7.

To help you to write and pitch the module at the appropriate level, the Quality Assurance Agency provides a description of the of the nature and outcomes expected at each level in The Frameworks for HE Qualifications of UK Degree-Awarding Bodies (October 2014). You can look up the descriptor for the relevant level in Section 4: The qualification descriptors.

How does copyright affect UoL online courses?

• Copyright provides a creator of an original work with legal protection against others copying and exploiting their work. 
• Works are protected by copyright as soon as they are created. A © symbol is not necessary. 
• Books, e-books, journals, images, photos, diagrams, databases, music, computer programmes, websites, etc. are all protected by copyright. 
• Websites – for a single website there may be a number of separate copyrights in force, e.g. copyright in the text, separate copyrights in images, photos, videos, etc. 
• We provide online courses to students in other countries so you cannot use educational exceptions in UK copyright law/fair dealing to justify copying third party material for our distance learning courses. 
• Generally you can’t copy the following for UoL Worldwide distance learning courses: material from books/journals you personally own; material in your own federation member’s library; material from your own federation member’s subscription databases. 

You may find the following checklist useful when trying to identify whether your materials are in breach of copyright or not. This checklist is not legal advice or a complete guide to copyright. Its aim is to highlight copyright issues UoL Worldwide and its authors have to consider when creating learning materials for our distance learning students.

Filming for lecture takes place in our studio in Stewart House, where we are well-equipped to provide professional quality sound and lighting. You can see a behind-the-scenes video of the process on our blog.

Your video editor will book you in for filming on a day that suits you and fits with our schedule. Your edited scripts will be prepared in advance of the filming and uploaded to our teleprompter. On the day, please avoid wearing anything green or with a detailed pattern. We recommend you wear comfortable shoes, as there will be a lot of standing and your feet won't be in shot.  

Our librarians will give you a log in for our Online Library and show you how to search for readings. You can search the library yourself to see if journal articles are available. Our library team will always double check items and can advise you on licenses for books/articles that are not currently available in the library.

You don't have to worry too much about the format of the references you provide for third-party material as your academic editor will make sure these are in house style. However, you should make sure that you provide as much info as you can - book title, journal title, publisher, chapter title, page numbers, link, etc. 

Please see the Credits and study hours page for a breakdown of the amount of directed and independent study hours per week.

We give the following guidance for readings and videos:

It can be difficult to estimate the timings for each activity – the best approach is to use judgement and make a rough estimation. It can vary per activity type, subject area and module – we offer the following estimations as a starting point.

We budget for approximately 50 minutes of in-house video material per week. For a 10-week module, this would be around 5 x 10-minute videos per week. Videos can be a mix of lectures, explainers, discussions, walkthroughs and practicals. We can also support animations. Please see the video page for more guidance. 

We recommend that academics set aside a minimum of 150 hours over the course of 9 months to complete a 10-week module. This number of hours then scales up or down – if you are working on a 50% redevelopment, you should expect it to take 75 hours and if you are working on a 20-week module, you should expect it to take 300 hours.

Please use second person when writing the materials and address the students as ‘you’. Try to strike a conversational, yet professional tone. It really helps if you are consistent throughout the module, but your academic editor will double check this as well.