Sport and Exercise Science MSc

Core modules

• Contemporary Issues and Communication in Sport and Exercise

  Discover the wider issues currently affecting researchers and practitioners in sport. Professionals working in the sporting landscape need to communicate complex, sometimes contentious issues to a variety of specialist and non-specialist audiences from athletes to parents, National Governing Bodies (NGBs) to stakeholders and decision makers, as well as the public. Being able to understand and effectively communicate potential problems or issues faced by sport science and coaching practitioners in the modern sporting environment will help you to be proactive in managing and dealing with problematic issues in a professional manner. In an environment where ‘knowledge’ is questionable in quality and readily available to non-specialists, you’ll learn about different sources of information and communication, and how these can feed into problem solving and practice in the real world. Looking at these contemporary issues in the wider sporting industry as well as completing a skills audit and action plan will help you to map your journey in to the sport and exercise profession, and identify your longer-term career aspirations.

• Research Project - Planning and Development

  Gain the skills you will need to start working as a postgraduate researcher. This module will introduce you to project design and planning, critically reflecting on how a research study would come to fruition. You’ll learn the journey of a research study, looking at time management, working in a research team or group and work prioritising. Explore what makes a good study, what are the potential limitations to studies and what differentiates a postgraduate research study from that completed at the undergraduate level? You’ll also debate aspects of systematic reviews and meta-analysis, and how the completion of literature-based reviews is critical to the development of the research question. You’ll also look at the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and how the data provided can be interpreted and evaluated. Throughout this module you’ll be encouraged to develop your scientific voice, how to express yourself through scientific communication, both verbal and written, as well as be introduced to writing for publications.

• Interdisciplinary Working in Sport and Exercise

  Investigate and answer real-world problems using interdisciplinary team work. This module aims at progressing your knowledge and understanding of integrated working across the broad area of sport, including exercise, health and wellbeing, and business sectors. You’ll gain an insight of how different professional disciplines or agencies work in an integrated manner to solve a variety of issues as well as the management of diverse teams, consideration of professional boundaries, individual vs team roles, cultural tradition and overlapping of skills. You’ll be required to work in diverse discipline groups to create a proposal on how you could solve a problem based in the area of sport, health, and exercise. You’ll then work to achieve this by transferring knowledge between disciplines and defend your choices of recommendations to a panel of academics, businesses and industry partners. Explore the benefits and challenges through lectures with guest speakers from a variety of sectors, providing an insight into their work. This module is invaluable learning if you want to develop an understanding of working in the applied field of sport and exercise science, and coaching.

• Essential Research Methods

  The module provides a theoretical framework of research methods for postgraduate students. It will encourage you to develop an increasingly autonomous and critical approach to research. You will be challenged to develop your research philosophy, consider the impact research can have on society and effectively analyse data using a range of advanced techniques relevant in sport and exercise sciences and psychology research. The module content will develop your critical understanding of the principles of data collection and analysis using various higher-level methods. You'll become critical researchers, be able to draw conclusions using multiple sets of data, effectively compare and contrast data and use literature to support ideas and/or theories. The module will be driven using real-world research questions, with example datasets provided to facilitate understanding of statistics and qualitative analysis. The module will be delivered through a combination of lectures, practical sessions and online tasks. It will equip you with a wide range of highly useful and transferable research and analytical skills (eg, numerical skills, use of research software, experimental design, presentations), which are highly relevant in the research and employment environment.

• Research Project

  Choose your field of study, develop your research strategy and present your final results in a thesis prepared to the highest scientific and/or professional standard. Draw on the knowledge you have gained from your studies to follow your thesis through, based on a topic taken from a series of themes related to the interests of the Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences team. You’ll be assigned a supervisor or, if appropriate, a supervisory team, who you’ll need to make regular reports to on the state and progress of your work.