MMU Rise

Learn to solve problems creatively, with a focus on creating innovative solutions, prototyping and communicating ideas.

This Design Thinking course will help you develop your ability to creatively solve problems.

It’s the second part of a two part course and it explores the second half of the Design Thinking Process. We’ll be looking at ideation and prototyping. If you’re joining from part 1, welcome, If you’re new, you can do this part without doing part 1, but we’d recommend that you go back and do part 1, which was about understanding our problem space and the people within it.

One of the key components of Design Thinking is being human centric, meaning you really do have to know your audience, and another key mindset is that we have to be willing to challenge our thinking and maybe reframe our problem so I would really recommend giving that half a go.
Another tenant of this process is that we continuously learn by doing and iterate on our work. The main way we do that is by creating prototypes and using them to test our ideas. That’s why Design Thinking methods can particularly help when you have a complex or fairly novel problem.

In this course We’ll explore how to have an idea, how to choose the most suitable idea, then how to create something quickly that you can test with your audience. If you have a project you want to take through this process as we go through the course, wonderful. If not, I’d recommend that you come up with a hypothetical idea so you can have a go at some of the processes.

Explore one of the ten pillars of the industrial strategy

Learn to solve problems creatively, with a focus on developing understandings and exploring the nature of problems from the perspective of end users.

The Design Thinking course will help you develop your ability to creatively solve problems.  It will take you through understanding the problem space and the audience through to ideation, design and prototyping. It’s split into two self study packs, Design Thinking 1 (this one) that looks at understanding your problem and audience and Design Thinking 2, which looks at creating ideas, prototyping and testing. We’d recommend doing both courses. You can complete this course if you have no previous training in design. It’s both theoretical and practical. 

Design Thinking methods can particularly help when you have a complex or fairly novel problem, so it’s often used when solving societal issues. And can design a new intervention to help. Maybe a product or a service. 

During this self study pack we’ll be looking at where Design Thinking came from, what it is and how and when to use it. We’ll then move on to getting to grips with understanding a complex problem space and finally we’ll look at understanding the audience of your design and some research methods and techniques to do that, particularly research that is favoured by the Design Thinking process.

Alongside learning and reflecting on Design Thinking concepts, we will give you a fictional problem to work through through the course. The course is also ideal if you have a real world problem that you might like to work through during the self study pack.

In this Self-Study Pack, we’ll begin learning about how volunteering can impact your student journey and right through all stages of your life. Start now to unlock amazing volunteer opportunities through Rise at Man Met!

We will explore the benefits and impacts of volunteering on you and others, as well as engaging with critical perspectives relating to volunteering, power and racism. We will grapple with the scale and scope of volunteering, the contexts where it takes place, and opportunities available to YOU! We will situate your interests at the heart of the prompts and activities, asking you to think about how you might wish to learn or develop through acts of service and volunteering opportunities.

The Self-Study Pack offers space for you to reflect on your personal motivations and drivers and to become more aware of your own strengths and how you might want to grow and develop through volunteering. Throughout this learning, we will be directing our focus both inwards to explore ourselves, and outwards, to think critically about the impact and benefits of our actions when volunteering.

You will finish this Volunteering and Service Learning Passport course and gain access to specially selected opportunities across Manchester and across various sectors. Learn about yourself, think about how you want to volunteer, and take time to develop skills and ideas that you can use when applying for exciting volunteer roles. This course is your passport into volunteering!

Welcome to Alternative Perspectives in Education.

This has been a collaboration of contributions from a number of educators within the university. During this Self Study Pack, we will explore ways to engage with learning outside of mainstream and formal learning environments. This Self Study Pack is open source meaning that you’re not going to need to log in or require any special access for any of the material. But it also means that there are plenty of opportunities should you wish, to explore the ideas further by engaging in wider reading, and we really encourage you to do this.

We will start this unit by exploring our context, gaining an insight into the ideology, pedagogy and theory that sits behind the education today. We will then move on to look at the place of creativity and its impact on learners as well as different models for learning. We will also explore alternative learning environments including a range of progressive educational spaces, forest schools and some global initiatives. Changing tact, we will explore the ‘soft skills’ of education and the role and impact of the educator, before we finally participate in a hypothetical exploration of how the future learner may experience education.

As you progress, you will have opportunity to map your own learning journey. By the end of the Self Study Pack you will have created a snap shot of both your own journey as a learner and also as either an educator yourself, or influencer of other learners. We hope you enjoy.

Mathematics (maths) is an important part of learning for all children in the early years and receiving a good grounding in maths is an essential life skill. As well as numeracy, it helps skills such as problem solving, understanding and using shapes and measure and developing their own spatial awareness. It helps them to recognise, create and describe patterns, which is essential for early problem solving skills.

Introducing maths to children from an early age helps to develop their understanding of all elements of problem solving and reasoning in a broad range of contexts. Practitioners need to be able to provide opportunities for children to practice their developing skills and knowledge so they improve their competence and confidence in using them. All children can be successful with maths provided they are given the opportunities to understand it in a way that makes sense to them. Ensuring children are engaged, motivated and thinking critically for themselves is vital for mathematics.

The aim of this self-study pack is to give you the knowledge to be able to support children’s early mathematical development and to be able to critically discuss the opportunities available for mathematics for children, from birth and consider the importance of laying these foundations upon success in later life.

Welcome to this Rise Self Study Pack focusing on Black Lives Matter and Business. It has been developed in collaboration with the United Nations Global Compact Network UK.

The United Nations Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. In 2020-21 the United Nations Global Compact Network UK hosted a ten-part webinar series, which brought together a diverse selection of expert guests to explore the role of business in advocating for the rights of Black people. During the course of this Self Study Pack you will learn more about the work of the United Nations Global Compact and their commitment to race equality.