Our degree courses with Foundation year offer the opportunity to prepare you for advanced study before you progress onto a full honours degree at the University of Westminster. Whether you do not feel ready for degree-level study, don’t have the right qualifications, want to change your subject specialism or return to study after an absence from education, we aim to encourage a broad range of students to undertake our Foundation year in order to progress onto their full honours degree with us.

The Foundation year is designed to give you the opportunity to explore new ideas, opening up new perspectives on the key debates within your chosen field. During the foundation year, you'll explore a range of creative disciplines and get a chance to develop in your chosen field, benefiting from workshops in our high-end facilities and working with leading academics who will encourage you to become a confident and creative thinker. Core modules accelerate your academic and professional development and you will also take modules within your chosen field, giving you the chance to develop a cross-disciplinary perspective on your course.

On successful completion of the Foundation year, you'll be able to move on to study for the Smart Computer Systems BEng Honours over a further three years study.

Smart computer system engineering is a growing market in today’s computer industry. Embedded systems have become widespread and can be found in almost all modern consumer devices, from washing machines to cars and robots. Computer system technologies are becoming smart and expanding even further to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) connectivity. You’ll study all of these topics throughout our course.

Our Smart Computer Systems BEng is designed around three themes: software/hardware programming, wireless networking and smart technologies. You’ll be exposed to many programming opportunities for a multitude of platforms and operating systems, and acquire an excellent knowledge of networking and client/server programming leading to the latest developments of the Internet of Things ecosystems, security and smart technologies such as smart sensors, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Our course aims to provide an exciting, enjoyable and rewarding learning experience, which will serve as a solid foundation for a successful professional engineering career and meet the current demand from employers.

The course offers a short-term work-based learning experience that will give you the opportunity to work on a real-life problem, which is normally set by an external organisation as a small-scale project. This experience will allow you to put theory into practice by applying your knowledge and skills gained from various modules to address a real-life situation, usually within the context of a business-related problem.

In addition, you'll have the opportunity to undertake a year in industry (work placement) after completing the second year of your study. This will help you gain work experience and enhance your employability after you graduate. You’ll be offered help and support to find and secure placement opportunities through various workshops and events organised by the Careers and Employability Service and the course team. Typically, you’ll be assigned into roles involving tasks related to software and/or hardware computer engineering.

Placements/ Year abroad

This course gives you the opportunity to take a year in industry (work placement) after completing the second year of your study. This will help you gain work experience and increase your chances of employability after you graduate.

You will be offered help and support to find and secure placement opportunities through various workshops and events organised by the Careers and Employability Service and the course team.

Typically, you will be assigned into roles involving tasks related to software and/or hardware computer engineering.

Career

With an industry-wide shortage of computer engineers, high-quality computer engineering graduates are enjoying a choice of job opportunities with good salaries.

This course will prepare you for roles such as:

• Computer engineers – responsible for developing, testing and evaluating software either for computer systems and/or for controlling and connecting various devices, such as sensors and machines that are different from traditional computers
• Computer network engineers – able to code, debug, test software for connecting a computer network, control data flow and address network security issues
• Embedded systems engineers – responsible for coding, debugging, testing and writing corresponding documentation, work largely with hardware and software, and often need to develop or configure a custom based operating system unique to hardware and even memory
• Software engineers – able to code, debug, test and write corresponding documentation, work largely with software and/or internet applications
• Systems engineers – responsible for monitoring the performance of systems, control a variety of processes and continually assess all stages of operations to ensure that a problem is solved and may work in virtually any industry, from software development and robotics to other parts of engineering