University of Tasmania, Australia

Go to the UTAS home page. Click on the Current Students option. Under the heading Quick Links , click on the option Class timetable. You can search using your student number or the unit code.

The easiest way to view your timetable (once you have enrolled) is to select the options to view the current semester only and your campus only. This cuts back on extra information on the screen. Each Faculty of Arts unit will usually show one two-hour lecture or two one-hour lectures per week. Usually these lectures are held together, but occasionally they will be held on separate days. Each Faculty of Arts unit usually requires you to attend one, one-hour tutorial each week, and your timetable will show a number of options for tutorial times and days of the week. Use the timetable to select your preferences for tutorial times and days. You enrol in tutorials via MyLO. Your unit outline also provide informations about tutorials under Details of teaching arrangements.

Talk to the unit coordinator for each of the clashing units. They can advise you of any options you may have for juggling classes. Alternatively, you could consider changing your enrolment. Contact a faculty officer to talk about your change of enrolment options.

You will get an enrolment statement early in the semester. This will confirm the units you are enrolled in. If there is a problem, you need to contact a faculty officer as soon as possible. Once your enrolment is confirmed, you can check the online class timetable to find out where and when your classes are.

The room numbers are on your class timetable. If you can’t find the room, you can ask the Service Desk in the library, Arts Student Central on the Hobart campus, the school office on the Launceston campus, or the main office on the Cradle Coast Campus. These places all have campus maps available and can point you in the right direction.

UTAS provides a disability service within the Support and Equity unit. If you would like to talk to a disability adviser, please contact the Unit to make an appointment. You should also talk to the unit coordinator about any special requirements.

You will be given a unit outline in the first lecture in the first week of semester. The unit outline can often also be downloaded from MyLO (not all units have a MyLO presence). Spare copies will also be available from Arts Student Central on the Hobart campus, at the office in the Faculty of Arts building in Launceston and from the office on the Cradle Coast campus. If you are a distance student, you can email the Distance Education Office or phone: +61 3 6324 3663 to replace your outline, or download it from MyLO.

The unit coordinator is the lecturer who is responsible for writing and administering the unit for the entire semester. The unit coordinator has final responsibility for unit content and assessment. The unit coordinator will also usually deliver most of the lectures throughout the semester, and will also conduct some tutorials. The name of the unit coordinator and contact details are in in the front of your unit outline under Contact details.

A lecture is a class in which the unit lecturer will address the entire enrolment of students for that particular unit (anything up to several hundred people may attend). Lectures cover the core material that you need to know to pass the subject, although this material will need to be supplemented through your required readings. Your lecturer may also discuss assessment such as essay topics, research approaches and exam preparation. The usual format of lectures is that the lecturer addresses the group with the aid of PowerPoint or overhead slides projected onto a big screen. Segments of video may also be shown. There is usually time for some questions, either during the lecture or in the breaks or at the end. In Arts, lectures are often supplemented by written lecture notes which are available on MyLO.

A lecturer is an academic staff member who is responsible for delivering the lecture material to students, and is usually also the unit coordinator. You may have the same lecturer throughout the semester; however some lectures may be given by other people who are specialists in that particular area.

The best way is to attend lectures. If you are experiencing difficulties with note-taking, you can talk to your unit coordinator or your tutor or contact CALT. Lecture notes are often made available on MyLO. In some cases lecture notes will be uploaded to MyLO before the lecture starts, but usually they will be available later that day. Lecture material may include PowerPoint slides or copies of overhead projections, or more detailed materials. Lectures may also be recorded and an audio file uploaded to MyLO via MyMedia. Distance students will be sent the relevant material by the Distance Education Office - if you are unsure about whether you have everything you need, email Distance Education Office or phone +61 3 6324 3663.

Everyone takes notes differently. Some people try to write down every word. Others note only key points. Some people take personal recorders into classes and record lectures to replay later. You will gradually work out the style of note-taking that suits you. If you are uncertain about what you need to be writing down, try talking to your unit coordinator or your tutor. You can also get training in study skills from CALT.

Some classes are delivered by video conference from other locations. Your class timetable will tell you which special videolink classroom you will need to attend. Videolink classes are indicated by the hash # symbol on the timetable.

A tutorial is a small group class in which students discuss set readings which they have completed in their own time. Students may be required to prepare answers to questions or exercises in order to participate in the tutorial. Tutorials are informal sessions during which students have plenty of opportunities to discuss the course content, as well as ask about assessment requirements. Tutorials are conducted by tutors, but it is expected that students will contribute throughout them. In first year, internal students are expected to attend tutorials on a weekly basis. Your attendance and participation in tutorials is assessable, and you must attend at least a certain number of tutorials to be eligible to sit the exam.

A tutor is an academic staff member who conducts tutorials. Tutors might also be lecturers or they might be postgraduate students. Tutors frequently work on a casual basis and this means they are not always available for student consultation. You may need to make an appointment. This is often best arranged by email. Your tutor will tell you his or her contact details in the first tutorial, and may also be in the front of your unit outline under Contact details .

All students enrol in tutorials via MyLO. If you enrol in a tutorial and then need to change to a different tutorial, you will not be able to do this yourself in MyLO. Instead, if you are a student on the Hobart campus, you will need to see the staff at Arts Student Central, located on the 2nd floor of the Social Sciences Building. For students on the Launceston and Cradle Coast campuses, you will need to contact the office staff on the Launceston campus.

No record is kept of student attendance at lectures. However you may miss something critical for your assessment. You can contact the unit coordinator to find out what material was covered and also access notes and/or audio recordings of the lectures on MyLO if they are available. Attendance at tutorials is expected and usually forms part of your assessment. You must also attend a certain number of tutorials to be eligible to pass the unit. A record is kept of student attendance. You need to contact your tutor to let them know that you are going to miss, or have missed, a tutorial. A medical certificate is a good idea if you missed your tutorial because of illness. Your tutor can advise you of the material you missed and you can catch up by making sure you have read the set readings.

Your unit coordinator and/or tutor will advise you of their contact details during the first lecture/tutorial. Their contact details are also in your unit outline. Unit coordinators have many responsibilities which take them out of their office and even off-campus frequently throughout semester. For this reason it is usually best to first contact your unit coordinator via email. Most coordinators also have student consultation times when they will be available in their office. These consultation times will also be in your unit outline, and are also usually posted on the individual coordinator's office door. If your problem is urgent, you can contact the school office staff and they may be able to contact the coordinator on your behalf. Please remember many tutors are casual employees and may not be available outside of their teaching hours. You should realise that university staff are not on call after regular office hours. You must not expect an immediate answer to your email or phone call if it is after 5 pm or on the weekend. You will be contacted on the next working day if possible.

MyLO is the name of the University’s selected online teaching software tool. MyLO (My Learning On-Line) provides a way for students to access written material such as unit outlines, lecture notes, assessment guidelines etc., all from any computer which has internet access. The web address for MyLO. Access to MyLO is password protected. Use your email user name and password. If you don’t know your email user name and password, contact the Service Desk.

Wait until after your first lecture before buying any textbooks. The lecturer will discuss subject reading requirements in the first lecture. Usually you will have at least one required (or set) textbook, as well as a photocopied book of readings known as a reader. Textbooks are available from the Co-op Bookshop and readers are available from UniPrint. Distance students and students at the Cradle Coast Campus should contact the Co-op Bookshop and UniPrint in Launceston about textbooks and readers respectively, although first year readers are available from the office on the Cradle Coast campus.

Possibly. Check the Library's reading lists for your unit. As some of our units run on different campuses at the same time but have different content, please ensure that you are accessing the correct readings for the unit on your campus.

You should speak to your unit coordinator or tutor in the first instance. It’s important not to waste time if you are uncertain about how to go about researching your essays. You can start your research with the reading list, and with the readings contained in the reader. However, to get the best results, you will need to go further. You should also contact the Reference Librarian at the Library if you aren’t sure how to access the resources offered by the Library.

Rather than print out large PDFs, save them so you can scan through them on screen. If you need to print out certain pages, you can do this later.

Remember to note down the exact website address, date and time you accessed it when printing or saving documents. You will need this information when putting together your reference list for essays.

If the website shows a particular article you want, but only the abstract or short citation is provided, you have several options. Firstly, try the journal or publication title in the library catalogue to see if you can obtain access that way. If not, try searching one or more of the databases which the library subscribes to – these contain many full-text articles. If you are unsure what database to search or how to search it, contact the Reference Librarian on +61 3 6324 3359 (for Launceston) or +61 3 6226 2225 (Hobart).

Most electronic journals have something called a “sample issue” available on their website. This is a complete full-text version of a past issue, which is made available for potential subscribers to view. So even if the journal is not available in full-text online or the UTAS library does not subscribe to it, you may be lucky enough to find the perfect article in one of the sample issues.

Many researchers focus on one or two particular areas for a couple of years or more. If you find a paper written by a particular author but are unable to access that specific paper, try searching under that author's name in the library catalogue or in the databases. It is likely that that author published papers on the same topic in other journals or publications. If the author's name is a common one, remember to combine the author's name with a subject keyword to limit your search to relevant results.

You can talk to your tutor or the unit coordinator about your research and essay plan. You may also need help understanding the university’s rules for acknowledging the work of others, which are designed to prevent plagiarism. Your tutor or unit coordinator can help you with this. You can also get help from CALT and/or join a peer-assisted study session.

You have several options, depending on the nature of your problem. If you are having trouble understanding the material or you are not coping with your assessment, we recommend you talk to either your tutor or the unit coordinator, who can give you personal assistance. If you are having trouble with note taking, study skills or writing essays, you can contact CALT, who may suggest you could join a peer-assisted study session, UniStart, or another of the many options available through Learning Support. You can also talk to one of our student advisers within the UTAS Transition Support Service or contact a faculty officer for advice . If you are having personal problems, we recommend you contact the Support and Equity Unit.

Plagiarism is using the work of others without acknowledging it. Whether you do it on purpose or inadvertently (by mistake), the consequences are serious. Plagiarism is regarded as academic misconduct by the University and can result in a range of penalties. You can find out more about plagiarism and academic misconduct and in your unit outline.

You can also talk to your unit coordinator or tutor about how to properly “reference”, or acknowledge, the work of others when writing your essays. The appropriate referencing style for undergraduate units is the School of Sociology and Social Work's Writing and Referencing Guide (PDF 265.3KB). Copies are also available at Arts Student Central on the Hobart campus, the School office on the Launceston campus, student resources and on MyLO (if unit supported by MyLO). There are also plenty of resources within the University to teach you how to reference your work and maintain your academic integrity. Try http://utas.libguides.com/referencing (note that the School of Sociology and Social Work uses the Author-Date, or Harvard, referencing system). For general essay writing skills, including referencing, you can contact CALT.

You will need to complete an extension request form, available from Arts Student Central on the Hobart campus, or the School office on the Launceston and Cradle Coast campuses, and take it to your unit coordinator as soon as possible. You may be able to arrange an extension but it must be done in advance (i.e. before the due-date!). Please also refer to your unit outline - Requests for extensions. If for some reason you are unable to submit an extension request form but think that you have a valid reason for requesting an extension, then please contact your unit coordinator as soon as possible. Genuine requests will be respected.

Contact the unit coordinator as soon as possible. You may be able to arrange an extension but it must be done in advance (i.e. before the due-date!). Please also refer to your unit outline - Requests for extensions.

Turnitin is one of the tools used by the University of Tasmania to help staff and students manage issues related to academic integrity. It is a system that compares text in submitted assignments with text on Internet pages and in electronic journals and documents stored in Turnitin's own database. More information about Turnitin can be found at the Turnitin - Information for Students. Some units within the school require that you submit your assignment via Turnitin, as well as in hard copy. Your unit outline, under Submission of assessments, will advise if you need to submit your assessment task via Turnitin. If you do need to, Turnitin is accessed in MyLO for the unit.

The most important thing you need to do is contact your unit coordinator as soon as possible. You will be able to discuss your reasons for not handing in your assessment and your available options.

Not necessarily. You should talk to the unit coordinator as soon as possible. Depending on which piece of assessment you failed, there may be options for improving your mark. You final result is calculated on the aggregate total of your results throughout the semester. So even if you fail one piece of work, you may do really well on another and balance it out. Many people do well on essays but not very well on exams, or vice versa. That is why we have a range of assessment types.

The most important thing is to know what you need to study. In sociology, your lecturer will spend time during the last lecture of the semester talking about exam preparation. It’s really important to focus on the areas that your lecturer tells you are likely to be included in the exam. If you have any questions about what you need to study for, contact your unit coordinator. Some people like to prepare entire paragraphs or essays which they memorise. This can backfire if the exam questions are slightly different to the question you have prepared for. You are better off attempting to understand all the key concepts so that you can respond to whatever question ends up being on the exam paper. If you are worried about your exam preparation or performance in general, you can contact CALT for assistance.