Hi Dean, I will offer a quick summary of the final year as I myself studied Software Engineering at Bournemouth in 2012-2013 after coming in as a direct entry(I previously obtained a HND from Bournemouth some years before). You can easily aim to work in multiple areas of Software with this degree such as testing, business analysis, project management or development.
The course set me up very well for employment straight after graduation with a real focus on the theory behind designing software and how to develop from business requirements using stakeholder analysis and UML diagrams. It is easy to think that half this stuff is not always used in practice but it does crop up and when you are able to be knowledgeable and offer good input with class diagrams or how agile development can work within a team you will find that work becomes a lot easier, you may already have enough to learn with just the code you are working on. Actual coding time tends to be only around 60% of the time with the remainder spent with close interactions with business people and testers.
It also provides some good things to talk about in the first junior developer role interviews before you have any deep coding knowledge. You will most likely do a sandwich year in industry as well which will further enhance your employment opportunities as you will already be productive for an employer.
One of my favourite units revolved around software quality and testing where you will learn TDD(Test Driven Development), unit testing and understanding what bugs really are(were the requirements right, not just a problem with the code?) and how to approach the problem of limiting bugs, manual testing and when to actually stop based upon expected vs found for example.
Other areas of interest were Business Processes and Requirements to understand the real world problem, Software Systems Modelling using UML and relational database diagrams to model the conceptual solution and research into the future of software development(reusable code, AI for example).
The lectures were well structured, all available online and allowed you to get a good handle on what the unit required of you. I would advise going to all lectures, you never know what will appear in end of year exams and you also have the opportunity to question anything with the lecturer at the time.
During your dissertation it really is up to you in how you would like to illustrate your ability and what interests you in regards to research, the course also helps to understand how to actually find the right info in papers and how to reference. I chose to develop a Java web application to help fuel my actual research within the dissertation and was able to go into a job as someone who could develop within a team straight away, of course you could just use good documentation alone and maybe focus in more of the business concepts associated with good software and design.
I now develop for an industry leader in transport logistics using Java for a multi threaded application, the actual direction you take is up to you although the dissertation was what ultimately shaped my career.
This has got me thinking now to get back in contact with a senior lecturer, David Newell, and maybe pop in to provide a talk for anyone interested.
Hope this helps!
Dean C