Happiness and Wellbeing

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• articulate and defend your own views concerning the nature of happiness and wellbeing
• evaluate critically influential accounts of happiness and well-being.
• see connections between those accounts and issues in other areas of study, such as economics, sociology, law, education, and politics.
• explore the implications of those accounts for how we should live and organise society.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• undertake, with adequate supervision, independent work, including identifying and using appropriate resources.
• work effectively to deadlines.
• take notes from talks and written materials.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• influential theories of happiness and wellbeing.
• the arguments for and against those theories.
• the relevance of those theories for how we should live.

The syllabus may vary from year to year. Topics may include:

• Whether your life goes well to the extent that you get what you want
• Whether your life can get worse without you being aware of that fact
• Whether happiness is a feeling
• Whether we can meaningfully compare your happiness and mine
• Whether and how happiness ought to be a moral and/or political goal

Teaching methods include

• Lectures
• In-class discussion
• One-on-one consultation with module co-ordinator

Learning activities include

• Attending classes
• Contribution to class discussion
• Doing independent research for and writing assessed work

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Essay proposal

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback: Written feedback will be provided. The opportunity to receive oral feedback from the module co-ordinator on any aspect of your performance during office hours or by appointment.
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No
• Percentage contribution: 100%

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.