Welcome to Creative Technology and Robotics at Norwich

Welcome Week starts on Monday 15 September, and this is when we will meet you on campus and introduce you to our buildings and facilities. You will meet the staff team and other students on your course and take part in some introductory activities designed so you can get to know each other and remain safe on campus. You will be invited to a session to collect your ID card and you will also have the opportunity to watch some videos about the services and facilities the University offers. Above all, this week is about having fun and making connections so we have a full and exciting timetable of social events and activities you can sign up to in conjunction with our fantastic Students’ Union team.

Key staff members are Jamie Gledhill, Course Leader, and Diana Vallverdu, Lecturer, both of whom you will meet during Welcome Week. Our introductory session will be at 9:30 on Monday September 15^th when we start to get to know each other through a couple of fun workshops – no preparation is necessary!

The first official taught day of your course is Tuesday September 23 2025.

Standard teaching days are all day Tuesday, Wednesday morning and all-day Thursday during which time you will participate in a mix of workshops, lectures and tutorials. Bring a pen and paper and be prepared to take notes to get the most out of these sessions – although session slides will always be made available to you.

Classes will generally be on-campus and in-person although Wednesday morning sessions for the first 8 weeks will be online. The rest of the week will usually be independent study time for you to research and develop your projects. Note that Wednesday afternoons are reserved as non-taught periods to allow you to participate in clubs, sports or any other activities you might be interested in. Individual timetables will be given at the start of the course.

On independent study days, and days where digital teaching is scheduled, you will be able to access the campus to continue your work as needed, or you can elect to work remotely. We will help you plan your time.

The course is naturally technical but also creative (as the name suggests!) and caters for a wide range of interests all the way from commercially applicable disciplines, e.g., full stack web development, to those that are more artistically creative, e.g., audio-responsive visualisation. The teaching staff thoroughly enjoy being creative with computer programming and physical technology and hope you will too! Our courses are smaller than some of the more established subjects, but very well equipped and with an excellent student to tutor ratio, which makes us feel more like a community of like-minded learners than a traditional undergraduate course.

You will see that we’ve included some suggestions of things you might like to read, watch and do before you arrive, so please read through the pack carefully.

If you do not already possess basic computer programming skills or you feel that you might benefit from brushing them up, we recommend that you work through the W3Schools Introduction to Programming pages:

You will also benefit from developing your web development knowledge prior to arrival as this is the first programming context we will work with in Year 1 of both BSc Creative Computing and BSc Creative Technology and Robotics. W3Schools also provides a useful of set of web development resources which you are advised to take a look at. Don’t feel like you have to complete each of these courses, just working through a few stages of each will give you very useful foundational knowledge:

HTML
CSS
JavaScript

If you want to be impressed by what’s possible with creative computing, technology and robotics, take a look at the following links.

Creative coder Bruno Imbrizi’s portfolio
Bruno Imbrizi

Creative coder and plotter enthusiast, Licia He’s website and portfolio
Eyes of Panda

Creative technology agency Recursive Digital’s website
Recursive Digital

Robot pioneers Boston Dynamics YouTube Channel
Boston Dynamics YouTube

It will be necessary for you to have at least a basic computer you can work on from home, however you don’t need to bring your machine into classes as the University will provide you with access to suitable computers during taught sessions and via computer labs accessible in the evenings and on Saturdays during term time. Our general IT equipment guidance will give you further insight into buying a computer for University and has a recommended specification for 3D Modelling, Animation, and Games Development which will be more than adequate for BSc Creative Computing and BSc Creative Technology and Robotics.

If you are thinking about buying a new computer, you are advised to talk to your course team first as they will be able to provide you with specific guidance and highlight any special offers that may be available to you.

Many students like to invest in a notebook they can bring to sessions.