What Is This?
At Manchester Met, we believe that your journey as student should be guided by the aspirations, passions, needs and interests you bring with you – and which you form whilst you are here. Future me is our way of talking about the support we give you to develop ambitions for your university experience and beyond into your future as a graduate. These might be career or life aims – and they might include things you want to achieve now that will make your time as a student more rewarding and enriching. We’ll support you to break your ambitions into more immediate goals. We call this map your Future me plan.
Accessing Opportunities
We’ll also help you to identify ways to meet these goals. Often this is through your course – but where there are gaps, we can support you to self-source experiences or opportunities. To help with this, you will have access to our Rise Co-Curricular programme. Rise has all sorts of additional opportunities to learn, all of which are free to Manchester Met students. Some of these are scheduled and structured: for instance we arrange short-courses and opportunities to gain certifications from external organisations, and projects in which you can collaborate with other students, staff and partners from the community, business and industry. If you want something less time-intensive, we always have one-off events, workshops and sandpits (very short, half-day projects).
If you want something really flexible, we have a range of self-study courses which have been created by practitioners and organisations from the Greater Manchester Community. These can be studied at your own pace to fit with your availability. You can also access the massive range of LinkedIn Learning courses as part of your studentship at no extra charge (find out how to do this at https://www.mmu.ac.uk/about-us/professional-services/itd/about/training/linkedin-learning)
You can also self-organise your own study or experiences through Rise, and we have a very simple mechanism do this, simply visit rise.mmu.ac.uk/claim. You could, for instance, arrange your own work experience, undertake self-study on a platform outside of the university – or do your own independent project work. As long as you can upload some evidence of this you can incorporate it into your Rise transcript. Many of our students use this as an opportunity to gain structured support and recognition for volunteering – and we have created a self-study pack to help you get started with that. To access it, just visit https://rise.mmu.ac.uk/courses/volunteering/. Volunteering can involve sustained commitments – but it can also be just one-off donations of short bursts of time – so it can be fitted around your life demands.
Rewards and Benefits
One of the exciting things about Manchester Met, is that we believe that these kinds of experiences beyond your course should be recognised as part of your formal learning. Everything you do will earn you ‘Rise Points’. These are our way of recognising the effort you invest in learning and development beyond your course. You will tend to earn a point for every hour of effort you invest – but you will earn more if your activity is active or involves your own initiative or leadership.
Rise points will be formally recognised in your degree. Once you have earned more than 300 points you will automatically gain an addition module on your final degree transcript that recognises your additional effort. 30 credits per 300 points will be associated with this module. By default these do not count towards your classification. However as long as there are no professional body restrictions on your course, you will have the opportunity to convert some of your points into full credit that counts towards your final classification. You should ask me if you are credit eligible to check this.
In order to bank points as full credit you will need to write a reflective piece which explores how you have managed your learning and the relevance to external audiences. These portfolios can be submitted at any time, with a final deadline of May in each academic year. If you are eligible to submit a portfolio, you will see a call to action in the blue segment of the website front-page.
Rise classificatory credit is applied at your current academic level and has a grade attached to it. This grade will be used as part of your classification if you have a lower grade in an optional module; so if you have a 68 in one module and 72 in your Rise module, the 72 will be used in your classification for the year instead. Rise can only compensate in-year, and for modules at the same level as your Rise assessment, so you can’t, for instance, replace a third-year assignment with a second-year Rise mark.
You can also stack your Rise points to earn Digital Badges. These are micro-credentials you can add to your CV or LinkedIn profile which evidence your effort in particular themes. Our core themes are; civics, sustainability, self effectiveness, digital, enterprise, and internationalisation. In each of these you can earn different levels of badge. Bronze badges need 75 points for any related activity. Silver badges require 150 points, but 50 of these points must be earned by engaging with others (attending talks, workshops, etc). For Gold digital badges, 100 of your 300 points need to come from an activity that involves application of your knowledge (it could be an internship, project work, etc). Activity listings will make it clear if they make you eligible for specific digital badge tiers, so that you can plan your engagement accordingly.
Alongside the additional credit and recognition, there are lots of benefits to our offer, you will find support to really forge your aspirations and access to opportunities which help you meet them. You will build your profile and your distinctiveness in how you stand out compared to other graduates and in relation to the kinds of jobs you might be interested in.
You will also hopefully enjoy the things you do, supporting your overall satisfaction and helping you to connect with others as part of the learning community to which you belong.
Tracking Your Achievements
We’ve built an easy way to share significant accomplishments directly to your LinkedIn profile. To do this, simply visit your Rise Transcript (click ‘grow your enhanced transcript’ on the front page, or visit rise.mmu.ac.uk/transcript). From there, achievements eligible for sharing will have a little pink share button next to them.
If you need to see which events or projects you have signed up for, you just need to click the “build your schedule” button on the main webpage (or visit rise.mmu.ac.uk/calendar) – you will see everything you are committed to in a yellow box. If you click on any of the events you have signed up, you can retrieve the schedule associated with it. If the event is online, you’ll also be able to access a join now link from its original listing (it’ll also appear at the centre of the main webpage).
If you want to see which self-study options you are already engaged with, you can click the ‘self study’ tile on the main website (or visit rise.mmu.ac.uk/approach/self-guided-activity). Your most recent self-study packs will also appear on the front page of the rise website.
Getting Started
If you’re struggling with your first steps with Rise you might start by thinking about whether you would like to do something self-paced (in which case, take a look at our self-study packs: https://rise.mmu.ac.uk/approach/self-guided-activity) or if you would like to do something in real time (in which case, check out our calendar of upcoming events). You could also try using the ‘themes and topics’ button at the top of the page and choose a digital badge to work towards.