Degree Programme Aims
| The aims of our degree programme are to: |
- Provide high quality teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels that is informed and invigorated by research and scholarship and alert to the benefits of student-centred learning.
- Sustain a culture of research and learning that promotes the free pursuit of knowledge, impartial analysis and the acquisition of informed attitudes to the study of the past.
- Maintain broad access to its programmes of study for students from a wide range of educational and social backgrounds.
- Respond to the diversity of student interests by offering an appropriate level of study choice at each level of study, enabling them to pursue chronologically and geographically diverse fields of study and by assisting qualified students, wherever possible, to change to degree programmes that better fulfil their needs.
- Equip students with the skills that will prepare them for employment or for further study.
After successfully completing a degree in History at the University of Sheffield, you will have gained the following:
| Knowledge and understanding: |
- The ability to reflect upon a wide range of historical knowledge about a range of regions in remote and recent periods of time.
- An understanding of the significance of historiographical developments since the professionalisation of the discipline.
- The development of comparative awareness, with a sensitivity to thematic approaches to the study of the past and an understanding of the delicacy and complexity of this task.
- Comprehension of the distinctiveness of the discipline of history, reflecting on its relevance in the contemporary world.
- The ability to read widely and critically within the historical literature, and to synthesize a body of literature.
- Recognition of the importance of historical debate, with an understanding of historical analysis and an evaluation of historians' arguments.
| Skills and other attributes: |
- The ability to write and speak about the past in good English, communicating historical arguments and providing appropriate evidence (including non-textual evidence) to support them, referencing the sources used.
- The ability to use bibliographic and research skills in order to locate and critically evaluate information sources, including pages on the World Wide Web reflecting a critical appreciation of the range of sources for historical study.
- The ability to assimilate material from a range of sources and use it to construct and sustain logical arguments both orally and in written exercises of varying length.
- The ability to recognise, critique and analyse different kinds of primary sources so enabling their use in the construction of historical arguments.
- The ability to formulate independent and informed historical judgements.
- The ability to respond constructively to debate and criticism.
- Familiarity with a range of IT skills, encompassing computer programmes and their application, electronic sources for research and the World Wide Web as well as word processing and email.
- Skills in effective time-management, including the ability to work productively alone and in groups.