First Year
Courses

Welcome to the BA in Community Education (Hons)

Introduction

The purpose of CUE (Coming to the University of Edinburgh) is to ease your transition to higher education, whether you're coming from further education, school, or from the community education field. If you have undertaken the HNC Working With Communities, CUE should build on and help you relate your existing knowledge to the Bachelor of Arts in Community Education (BACE). If you are returning to formal education having been working or bringing up a family, for example, you will find that CUE complements the University's guide for mature students. This guide answers some of the questions that you may have. It also outlines the different entry routes for mature students and the possibilities for study within different subject areas.

The BACE honours degree enables you to gain practical skills, to reflect on your own formal and informal learning, and to develop knowledge through class-based readings and discussions. It leads to a professional qualification in community education. For a quick guide to the sorts of work carried out by community educators, have a look at Illuminating Practice, published by Learning Connections, a Scottish Government agency responsible for promoting community learning and development. Exploring this website will help you to see where the challenges lie in joining the BACE programme. Whatever your starting point, CUE should support your transition to university.

Throughout these pages you will find information about the courses that make up the BACE programme, and be introduced to the staff who organise and deliver it. Going through the pages will give you a good idea of undergraduate study at the Moray House School of Education, which is handily located in the centre of Edinburgh (map), as well as an insight into what it means to be a student at the University of Edinburgh. CUE: Community Education includes the thoughts of some current students about what the transition was like for them.   Using CUE: Community Education At the centre of this online learning experience, is a case study called Cobblers Youth Club. Although not a true case, it is realistic and typifies a number of the challenges you might encounter as a community educator. Take some time to read it, and consider the problems, issues and questions it raises. You will find that Cobblers is connected to two first and one second year courses. This linking is to illustrate how the BACE helps you to develop the skills, knowledge and values needed to address the sorts of challenges for community education revealed by the case study. The courses are: Working With Individuals and Groups (WWIG), Introduction to Community Education (ICE) and Professional Practice 1 (PP1). When you click on the links to the three courses, you will find that they contain short exercises, readings, links to websites and other resources such as online dictionaries. Engaging with these learning materials will provide you with an insight into the subject area, and give you a foretaste of studying at university level. More broadly, it should open a window into the ways of thinking and practising in the field of community education. Interested? Give it a go!

Get into the Case Study

CUE has been developed at the University of Edinburgh by John Bamber and Clara O'Shea as part of the Student Recruitment and Admissions 'Transitions' Project in 2006/7. For further information on CUE and on CUE: Community Education contact: John Bamber, Department of HIgher and Community Education, Moray House School of Education, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 8AQ, Tel.: +44 - (0)131 - 651 6116, E-mail: john.bamber@ed.ac.uk

Website updated: June 19, 2008