The University of Greenwich has a whole team of advisers who can give specific help to international students. See the Visa and Immigration page on the university website for details.

You should apply as early as you can to guarantee your place for the September intake. Applications should ideally be made between March and May to ensure that your application is considered and processed in good time for entry in the same year. However, we understand that some applicants may want to apply later that this and we can usually process applications made before the end of August.

Although we don’t assume any knowledge of web design, it would be beneficial for you to do some background reading before commencing the programme. We recommend that those without any prior knowledge or experience of web design spend some time preparing for study by following our Preparing for study recommendations. This will really help you get a head start in this complex subject area. In addition, you will need to make sure you can commit a great deal of time for your studies and this may require planning ahead.

The cost of the programme varies depending on whether you are a home/EU student or an overseas student and whether you take the programme in full-time or part-time mode. It also depends on whether you already have a masters level qualification or not. See the Postgraduate fees page on the university website for details.
In addition to tuition fees, students should allocate around £200 for book purchases. Those on a tight budget should note that all texts on course reading lists are available from the University library however, some of them are excellent references that you’ll want to keep with you at all times.

There is just one intake each year (usually in the third week of September). Unlike some other programmes, we do not have a Spring intake.

The actual time spent on study and project work will vary from student to student but on average you should plan on spending 25-50 hours per week (in addition to attendance) for the full-time mode and half that for the part-time mode. Be realistic about the time you have available. For students with no previous experience of web design or those in full-time employment, we recommend the part-time mode.

You need no experience of web design before starting the MA. We start from scratch and assume nothing other than a familiarity with general office software, operating systems (Windows or MacOS) and file management. However, prospective students with little or no experience of web design are advised to do some background reading before the start of the programme. See Preparing for study for more information. The programme is fast-paced and students who have not prepared adequately may find the learning curve quite steep.

In a word, no. Dreamweaver is not a tool that is used professionally. There is a common misconception that one becomes a web designer by learning how to use Dreamweaver — nothing could be further from the truth and in some respects, such tools get in the way of developing a fundamental understanding of web design principles.

As a student on this course, you will learn to use industry standard tools. See Design principles for more information.

Students who study with us vary greatly in what they plan to do after graduation but there are 4 common intentions:

• To gain new skills with the aim of improving their career prospects with their current employer.
• To develop an existing interest in web design to such a standard that they can work for a web design company.
• To expedite a career change. This may be because they are not happy in their current career or because their circumstances have changed – they may have children and need to spend more time at home.
• To start a career path after undergraduate studies.

See Stories to find out what some of our students are doing now.

We aim to make the programme a good balance between theory and practice. Theory is delivered via lectures and seminars but is backed up by practical project work and workshops.

Currently, all students on the course attend on a Wednesday. Full-time students attend a full day, 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 5pm. Part-time students attend one half day, 10am to 1pm in year one and 2pm to 5pm in year two.

Teaching consists of two 12-week terms, one before Christmas and one after.

You don’t need anything special. There are many free and open source applications for the web designer and a good, professional software toolkit can be assembled at little or no cost – see below.

A Web Design Toolkit

The applications listed below are all you need to create brilliant web pages.

• Atom – Excellent open source text editor with syntax highlighting.
• Sublime Text – The current industry favourite is an excellent choice.
• Affinity Designer – High value, low cost application for graphics.
• FileZilla Client – Probably the best free/open source FTP client.
• Firefox – The open source and standards compliant browser.

Write your HTML and CSS code in Sublime Text, create and edit your images in your favourite design application, preview the results in Firefox and then upload to your web server using FileZilla.

Note: All students on this course are provided with free access to Adobe Creative Cloud, meaning that you have access to useful tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.

All classes are held at the Stockwell Street building in the centre of Greenwich. The site is well served by public transport; closest stations are Cutty Sark (DLR) and Greenwich (Overground). See Location and attendance for more information.

We realise that for many prospective students, course fees are an important consideration. You can get advice on all things finance related at the University of Greenwich Fees and funding page.