Mathematics 100 Hours
1. The taught component
All Mathematics PhD students must take and pass the equivalent of 100 hours of taught course units over their first two years of study. A minimum of 60 hours must be taken in your first year of study, and the remaining hours must be completed in your second year.
If you start mid-year (i.e., at any time other than September) the start of your first/second year will not coincide with the start of the academic year, but you will need to complete the required number of hours prior to your yearly progression report.
The purpose of the taught component is to both give training in areas of mathematics relevant to your research, but also to broaden your mathematical knowledge beyond the narrow focus of your PhD. We encourage students to take courses that are not relevant to their research area for this reason.
Only courses that have been pre-approved by the Department can form part of the taught component. Sensible rounding of hours applies (e.g. if you take and pass 96.6 hours of taught component materials, this will be rounded up to 100 hours)
You can choose to study either MSc (level 6) course units, MAGIC units, or APTS courses. You should discuss with your supervisor or supervisory team in registration week exactly which courses you should take.
1.1 MSc level 6 course units
All 15 credit MSc units are worth 33.3 hours each.
The Department runs several MSc programmes, and any of the course units that make up the MSc programmes can be taken as part of the taught component.
You can register for MSc units by emailing the doctoral academy at FSE.DoctoralAcademy.Support@manchester.ac.uk. Course units can be found within the overview description of each MSc programme listed on the following page:
You can also choose to take course units on an audit-only basis; in that case, you would not need to complete coursework or sit the exam, but these would not count towards your 100 hours.
Coursework
Many MSc course units have associated coursework, with penalties for late submission. The course lecturer will give details of the coursework each of the units you are enrolled on.
Examinations
First semester course units are usually examined in the January examination period, and second semester course units in the May/June examination period. As a PhD student, you are advised to look for potential clashes between the exam and conferences you may wish to attend, and take that into account when selecting units. Further information and details about the exam will be given by the lecturer for the unit.
The examination timetables are posted in advance of the examination periods, and you must check the examination timetable in good time. Each student is allocated an individual seat number for each exam, and you must sit in the seat which has been assigned to you. You can obtain your own individual copy of the timetable from the Student Portal via My Manchester.
Students who are enrolled onto examinations who are not registered in the same year (e.g., students who begin the programme in January taking semester one exams) will have to manually enrol onto examinations. Please email FSE.DoctoralAcademy.Support@manchester.ac.uk if that is the case.
1.2 MAGIC units
MAGIC units are worth either 10 hours or 20 hours, dependent on the unit.
MAGIC stands for 'Mathematics Access Grid: Instruction and Collaboration'. It is a network of mathematics departments across the UK. MAGIC shares postgraduate level courses in all areas of mathematics and is taught via access grid technology (a form of live video broadcast).
You can register for MAGIC units via the website Maths MAGIC:
- Navigate to the website and click the '‘Log in' icon.
- Click ‘Forgot your password?’ and enter your university email address.
- You will receive an email giving details of your password.
- Once logged in, you can register for a course by clicking on 'Edit my course registration'.
Assessment
Each MAGIC unit will normally have a written examination that is set and marked by the lecturer. This examination will normally take the form of an ‘open book take home’ written exam. An exam for a 10-hour course should be completed in two hours, and for a 20-hour course, three hours.
The examination will be made available via the Assessment tab during the exam period.
The exam should be taken during a two-week exam period after the end of the MAGIC semester. This period will not include major public holidays and will be publicised clearly on the Assessment tab for each course. You will need to devise your own schedule for completing the examinations.
You submit work by uploading legible examination scrips to the course file space. The file name of your submitted work should clearly show your name and the MAGIC course number.
You will receive either a pass or fail for the unit, and the marked scripts will be made available to you.
1.3 APTS courses
Each residential week of APTS is worth 33.3 hours.
APTS stands for 'Academy for PhD Training in Statistics'. APTS is a collaboration between major UK statistics research groups and it organised residential courses for PhD students in statistics and applied probability. These take the form of four residential weeks, and you will study two intensive course modules per week.
Information on APTS, including details of course modules is available at the Academy for PhD Training in Statistics website.
If you are interested in attending one or more APTS weeks, you should firstly discuss this with your supervisor. Funding from the Department is often available for students to pay for fees, subsistence, and travel costs, but you will need to apply for this from the Travel Fund - contact maths-ops@manchester.ac.uk.
The Department will register students to attend APTS weeks at the start of each academic year.
Each APTS week requires you to undertake some supplied preparatory work, and after attending you will be required to complete and pass an assessment. The pass mark is 50%.
1.4 Other courses
In some circumstances, other courses may be taken as part of the required 100 hours.
- In each year, the department may offer specific additional courses for PhD students, with the number of hours dependent on the course.
- Several organisations in the UK and abroad offer residential courses aimed at postgraduate students, teaching highly specialised areas of mathematics. These are often highly valuable for PhD students, and attendance at these is encouraged if they are relevant. At the present time, however, these usually cannot contribute to the 100 hours of courses, because they do not usually have the required structured assessment. Occasionally, courses of this sort are assessed robustly, and in this case it may be possible to include them in the 100 hours, with the permission of the Head of Postgraduate Research Students.
1.5 Mitigating circumstances
Mitigating Circumstances is the name given to the university procedure for dealing with circumstances (such as illness, bereavement, etc.) that may have affected a student’s performance in an assessment for a taught course. (This is separate from the process for applying for an interruption, when such circumstances affect PhD research). It is the student’s responsibility to inform the university as soon as possible if mitigating circumstances may apply to any of their assessments. If you are experiencing unpreventable or unforeseeable circumstances that have an adverse effect on your academic performance in a taught course, you should apply for mitigating circumstances.
You may wish to discuss this with your supervisor.
1.6 Academic Malpractice
Academic malpractice in the taught courses undertaken by PhD students is governed by the University policy on Academic Malpractice.
The Department and the University take academic malpractice, such as plagiarism, collusion, falsification, or fabrication of results, cheating in examinations, etc, very seriously and you must ensure that you understand what academic malpractice is and that you understand the penalties involved. The Department and University will take action in all cases where academic malpractice offences have been detected and ignorance of the regulations will not be taken as an acceptable defence. You should also note that you have a responsibility to ensure the originality of your own work (i.e., you should not give other students a chance to copy your work). Students whose work has been made available to be copied will normally be subject to the same penalties as those applied to students who copied.
If you believe that another student has gained access to your coursework for an assessed course, you should inform your supervisor or the Head of Postgraduate Research Students as soon as possible.
1.7 Progression through the taught component
There are normally three assessment periods in each year: January, May/June, and August/September.
If you have failed one or more course units of the taught component, or if enough hours have not been completed, the Department will normally require you to resit the course units or take an alternative course at the next opportunity.
Performance in the taught component is used to inform the end-of-year progression decisions. If you perform poorly in the taught component, then your independent assessors and supervisory team may use this as evidence to not let you progress on your PhD programme.