I.T. & Computing Foundation Course

The Bellerbys I.T. Foundation course is ideal for students wishing to study Computing or Information Techology related degrees at university, including Business Information Systems, Information Management, Information Technology, Computing and Multimedia courses.  The course is carefully designed to focus on the academic areas most useful to your future study intentions.

There are two pathways, depending on your future career intentions.  For students who wish to work as middle managers or marketing professionals using computers in their daily work at a fairly sophisticated level, including the development of websites, we recommend the Bellerbys Brighton IT Foundation course.

For students who wish to work in the IT industry from IT support through to systems development projects, which may involve a mix of hardware development and software design, we recommend the Bellerbys Cambridge Computing Foundation course.

Academic Structure

You will study core subjects, with all other Foundation students, plus the following modules.

Brighton IT Foundation course:

Computing/Information Technology 2
Elements of the systems cycle - analysis, design, implementation and evaluation, application to a real-life project.

Computing/Information Technology 3
Web page design and scripting using: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and some image manipulation.

Computing/Information Technology 4
Theory and application surrounding databases, processing, reporting, testing, Visual Basic, functions and procedures.

Business Mathematics
Aims to develop basic algebraic skills, including indices and logarithms, and a practical interpretation, to develop an understanding of basic statistics and to introduce linear programming, and basic calculus.

Business Studies 1
An introduction to the key challenges involved in setting up and managing a business in the modern market economy, to include business start up, legal business structure, internal and external influences on the business and finance; plus Human Resource Management to include motivation, leadership, training and recruitment.

Business Studies 2
How to set up and operate a business. Close attention is paid to legal and other external influences, quality management and business ethics. Students will also have the opportunity to undertake relevant case studies.

Cambridge Computing Foundation course:

Systems Analysis
Elements of the systems cycle - analysis, design, implementation and evaluation, application to a real-life project.

Introduction to Java
Introduction to the principles and conventions of object-oriented programming using this exciting and rapidly developing language.

Introduction to Robotics
Using a visual programming language (LabVIEW) students develop programmes that control the actions and simple behaviour of standard robots.

Networking
The principles of Local and Wide Area Networking.  Students learn the protocols for data transfer and study network security and methods for data storage and backup.

Knowledge Engineering (KE)
KE is at the frontier of modern business computing – the use of expert systems based on declarative programming.  Within the module, students will learn the principles that underpin KE.

Pure Maths
Functions including the modulus and exponential functions; logarithms; series; the equations of lines; solving trigonometric equations; basic differentiation and integration and their applications; data handling including histograms, mean, mode, median and standard deviation.

Where Next?

Students who successfully complete the Information Technology Foundation can join the following Bachelor Degree programmes with our partner universities.

Anglia Ruskin University
Aston University
Bangor University
University of Brighton
University of Bristol
University of Chester
De Montfort University Leicester
Durham University
University of Essex
University of Hertfordshire
Keele University
University of Kent
Lancaster University
University of Liverpool
Liverpool John Moores University
Loughborough University
Brunel University*
University of Greenwich*
Goldsmiths, University of London*
University of Kingston, London*
London Metropolitan University*
Middlesex University*
University of Manchester
Northumbria University
Oxford Brookes University
University of Portsmouth
University of Reading
University of Sheffield
University of Southampton
University of Surrey
University of Sussex
University of Sunderland
Swansea University
University of York

* Universities in the London area

Class of 2009

We have a number of I.T. Foundation students graduating onto a range of courses at top UK universities, including:

Student Name	Home Country	Final Grade	Degree Course	University
Ehijiele Anthony Agenmonmen	Nigeria	88%	IT in Organisations	Southampton
Hansen Setiady	Indonesia	85%	Computer Science	Southampton
Kah Kent Chan	Malaysia	85%	Computer Games Programming	Teeside
Alia Zhunussova	Kazakhstan	80%	Creative Computing	Goldsmiths
Fai Keong Loi	Macau	78%	Electronic & Computing Engineering	Arts, London