Length: 20-30 minutes

Outcomes

After this lesson, you will be able to: Buid a proposed timetable

After this lesson, you will know: About the enrolment processes at Macquarie How to read the Timetable and Handbook pages Some of the important terminology used at Macquarie University

Summary

One of the first things you will need to do is to pick your units, classes and timetable and find out where they are all located. This module will help you to get familiar with also using the Handbook and Timetable sites.
Outcomes:
By the end of this module you will:

• Understand and plan your first semester of classes
• Learn about the Timetable and Handbook sites
• Fill out your Proposed Program Form

Step 1: Understanding the Handbook

When planning your timetable, its important to make sure that the subjects you pick are in line with your course requirements as stated in the Handbook. The first step is to look up what these course requirements are and to make sure you understand them and are fully aware.

Open up the Handbook site (http://handbook.mq.edu.au/) and click on 'Degrees and Diplomas' under Undergraduate  on the left hand side.

The resulting page should take you to a whole list of degrees and diplomas available at Macquarie, so click on the one you're enrolled in to see the detailed course requirements.

Once you've identified your degree and have had a look at your course requirements, click on the next page to see what all the jargon means.

Step 2: Course Requirements

You should have a page that details your course requirements on your screen. This page gives you an idea of what you need to have completed by the end of your degree for you to graduate in that degree. While this may seem a long time away, the choices you make in your first year will have an impact down the line, so planning your degree out is an important step!

On the Course Requirements page, it will detail things such as:

• Faculty, Department and Award (or Degree)
• General Requirements for the Degree
• A list of compulsory units or requirements

While the specifics may be different from degree to degree, these sections will be able to give you an idea of how to structure your degree. Some degrees, like the Bachelor of Commerce - Professional Accounting, are quite structured and will have a list of most of the units you will need to complete, while others like the Bachelor of Arts, are a lot more flexible and the requirements will depend on your chosen major. For degrees like the Bachelor of Arts, you will need to click on a Major to see a more detailed requirement for your chosen study.

You will notice here that there are some words/terms you may not be familiar with, here is a short description of some of them:

• Units - your subjects, each one is given a number of credit points.
• Credit Points - the credit point value of a unit reflects the amount of work required in the unit. Most half-year units will be made up of 3 credit points with the expectation of 3 hours of work each week on that unit.
• Levels - such as 100 level, 200 level, 300 level. This indicates the level at which a unit is taught, so a 100 level unit will usually be taken in your first year and require no pre-requisites, while a 200 level unit will usually require you to have had prior knowledge (usually a previous 100 level unit) that it will build upon.
• Pre-requisite - a statement of the required knowledge or conditions that must be satisfied before enrolment in a particular unit of study is permitted. If you have not met the pre-requisite, you will be unable to enrol into the subject without first completing it.
• Electives - these are units that you choose outside of the required list. These can be from any department or faculty provided you satisfy the pre-requisites.

If you would like the official definitions of any of these terms, you can find them and other terms using the Glossary site.

A useful tip when structuring this is to work backwards, start with your final year units and look at the pre-requisites you will need to do to complete them. Repeat this until you reach your first year subjects. The reason for doing this is so you understand exactly where your units will be taking you and what to expect in terms of the subject areas.

Now that you know which units you will be taking, its time to move onto making the timetable. You should now have a Course Plan for your Degree and an idea of which units you will be taking and when.

Step 3: Making your Timetable

So now you should have your first year units planned out (if not, return to the previous step and go through the activity again). Let's now look at making and filling out theProposed Program Form (timetable) using the Timetable site.

Firstly, you'll need to search for the unit code, you can do this by either using:

• the Department list (you can find which department offers your unit using the Handbook site and clicking on Units instead of Degrees)
• Typing in either the whole unit code (ie, AHIS100) or simply the first four (4) characters (ie, AHIS) into the search field
• browsing through the list of Units.

Units are 'offered' via three main means: Day, Day & Night, or External (Distance Education) study. It is important you choose the right mode of offering! You can tell the mode of offer and when the unit is scheduled by reading the unit code, for example:

AHIS100 / S2 / Day - Ancient Greece Tyranny and Democracy 800-399 BC
Unit Code / Semester Offered / Mode of Offering - Name of Unit.

The next step is to select the Period (Standard Semester 1, 2 or 3, or All Year) and the days, (All Week or All Weekdays) and select the output you want to see it in (List or Calendar). This will take you to a listing of the classses for your unit.

The list view will take the form shown to the right. The way to read it is to go through each different 'class type' (ie, Lectures, Tutorials, Practicals, Labs, Seminars, etc) and pick one from each. So in this example, AHIS100 has two classes for Lecture_01 and two classes available for Lecture_02.

You do not have to attend both (one is actually an iLecture) but simply choose one from each.

Similarly, when picking a tutorial class, there are three in the example, you only need to pick one!

Start filling in your Proposed Program Form in pencil, so that you can find the best combination that works for you. Once you are done, you're ready to submit the form at Enrolment! Congratulations!