Introduction

UG Course Specifications (regulations)

This part of the Handbook contains regulations governing your degree, including:

• Core and optional modules
• Progression criteria (i.e. conditions you must meet to progress to the next year, and to graduate)
• Module registration and deregistration
• Exams and assessments
• Mitigating circumstances and reasonable adjustments

University specifications and departmental specifications

The full regulations for your degree programme are the combination of

1. University regulations for your type of programme, e.g. BSc or Integrated Masters (MMath) programmes
2. Departmental regulations governing requirements which are specific your programme (i.e. any of the degree programmes listed in this handbook, with codes such as G100, G103, GL12)

Some regulations can change over time and can vary depending on which academic year you began your programme of study in.

How your workload is described terms of CATS

Academic credits are measured in CATS which stands for Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme. Maths modules are typically 10 or 15 CATS, with very few exceptions.

The normal load (i.e. minimum load) is 120 CATS. The maximum load is 150 CATS.

Each CATS roughly corresponds to 10 hours of work (including lectures, supervisions, private study and discussions).

For example, a 10 CATS module requires around 100 hours of work, comprising:

• 3 hours of lectures per week x 10 weeks
• 4 further hours of private study per week x 10 weeks
• 30 hours of revision and exam preparation.

The normal load of 120 CATS corresponds to 40 hours of work per week for 30 weeks.

Do not take more than 120 CATS unless you can devote the additional time to your studies.

Starting in academic year 25/26: Students taking 150 CATS will require approval from DUGS. The approval decision will be made after the module registration deadline. Approval is unlikely to be given if you previously failed some modules in the previous exam period, in which case you will be asked to deregister for some modules.

Overcatting

Taking more than 120 CATS of modules in an academic year is known as overcatting. Students who take over 120 CATS have their end of year average mark calculated according to University regulations:

"With the normal load for a year's study being 120 CATS (or such larger figure as is specified by course regulations) and the maximum permitted load being 150 CATS then, for each year of study, a candidate's mean mark is the arithmetic mean of the subset of whole modules, weighted according to their credit (CATS) weighting, which satisfies the course regulations and results in the highest mark."

What all this means is that we look at the power set (i.e. all possible combinations) of your module selection satisfying at least 120 CATS (containing all core modules), and pick the combination that results in the highest weighted average (weighted by CATS).

If you overcat and do not perform well in some optional modules, then they will not be included in the end-of-year average calculation. However, ALL modules you have registered for will still appear on your academic transcript your Higher Education Achievement Report, HEAR.

Here is a worked example of how your end-of-year mark is calculated if you overcat.

Core Modules, Optional Core Modules, Listed Modules, Unusual Options

In the Handbook, you will see each module described as being one of the following types:

• Core, required core, optional core
• List A, B or C
• Unusual Option

Core modules are those that you must take. They would be automatically registered for you.

Required core modules are core modules that you must pass to progress to the next year of study.

Optional core modules are a group of modules from which you must take a specified number. There are two optional cores in year 2 of G100, from which students must take at least one. There are also two optional cores in year 4 of G103.

Listed Modules are those modules which you can register to take as optional modules which are not considered to be Unusual Options.

• List A modules have a high mathematical content. These include some modules from other departments. In years 2 and 3, students are required to take some List A modules.
• List B modules are usually external modules that have some mathematical content, but are not required by the regulations. For historical reasons, year-1 optional modules are all List B.
• List C modules are UG Level 4 modules (MA4 or XX4). These are taken by G103 students in the third and fourth years.

All other modules are considered Unusual Options. More about these on the Unusual Options page of this Handbook.

Module FHEQ Levels

University and departmental regulations often refer to the so-called Frameworks for Higher Education (FHEQ) level of a module. This comes from nationally-recognised volumes of credit for qualifications at all levels of the Quality Assurance Agency's QAA’s Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).

The FHEQ level of a particular module is determined by its code as shown in the table below.

Module code	FHEQ Level	Undergraduate Level	Example
XX1XX	4	1	MA144
XX2XX	5	2	ST232
XX3XX	6	3	MA3K7
XX4XX	7	4	PX436

IATL module code changes: From academic year 25/26, modules provided by the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) are now coded according to the table above. For example, modules previously coded IL0XX and IL1XX modules are now coded IL2XX and IL3XX respectively.