The methods of teaching at University are often different from those you might have met elsewhere. This section describes a little of what to expect of your learning environment.

The first thing that you discover about a University like UTS is that it is a very large place with tens of thousands of students. This means that it can be very impersonal. It also means that, however much staff want to watch out for you individually, there are times when they won’t notice when you are having difficulties with your studies. So, when you do not understand something, try to work out exactly what your problem is. Then help yourself by being prepared to ask questions.

Teaching at University is usually run as a combination of lectures, tutorials and laboratory sessions. These may be supported by a number of other modes of delivery, e.g. Computer Based Training, Web-mediated learning, project work. You will be expected to do a lot of work outside your formally timetabled hours. As a rough rule of thumb, you should be prepared to spend, on average, two hours per week for each credit point of a subject. So, for example, a six credit point subject should need about 12 hours of work, including lectures and other formal classes. Obviously, the exact amount varies, depending on how efficiently you study, how well the lecturer estimated the amount of work in the assignments, and so on.

Lectures

Lectures are usually one or two hour sessions in a large room with up to 200 students, or even more, in one class. The size of these classes means that it is very hard for the lecturer to answer everybody’s questions during the session. However the lecturer will normally welcome questions either at particular times during the class, during a specific break, or at the end of the class.

Normally, if the class is scheduled for longer than one hour, lecturers will have short breaks during the scheduled time of the class to enable you to refocus your brain. These breaks are usually not long enough to go off to get a cup of coffee. If you do leave the room, try to disrupt the class as little as possible when you return. Many large lecture theatres have extra entrances at the rear. Re-enter from those rather than at the front of the room.

Different lecturers use a variety of techniques. In the first lecture for a subject, the lecturers will probably make an explicit statement of their expectations of you, or refer you to a section within the Subject Outline for the subject. Some of the approaches you may meet include:

• Delivery is built around the use of overhead projector foils or Microsoft PowerPoint. Often the lecturer will give out pre-printed copies of the foils at the start of the lecture, or may tell you where you can get them. Sometimes they may be made available for you to download from the University's online learning system, UTSOnline. Usually the lecture foils will not contain all of the material for the subject. You should take additional notes during the class, focusing on the key aspects.

• The lecturer may expect you to do some reading from a textbook beforehand to enable you to understand the processes that are being covered in the lecture. It is a good idea to try to ‘read ahead’ in the textbook before lectures, whether the lecturer recommends it or not.

• Some lecturers may not provide any pre-printed material. Then they will expect you to make notes during the class. You may find that your hurried scrawl from the lecture is difficult to decipher later on!

The best way to organise notes is to write headings and brief notes in class, leaving big gaps, then expand these notes as soon as possible after class. Rewrite your notes more legibly after the lecture, so that you can read your notes when you come to review the sub¬ject. The re-writing will also help you to clarify the ideas and absorb the material.

Tutorials

Lecture-based subjects will usually be supported by a tutorial session. The large lecture group is broken into smaller groups of 20 to 30 students led by a tutor (who you may meet as the lecturer in another topic or subject). Again, there are a variety of approaches, depending both upon the tutor and the subject material to be covered. A couple of those approaches are:

• As part of a lecture, you may be given a set of problems to work on, which will be discussed in the tutorial one week later. It helps both you and the tutor if you have attempted the problems before you come to the tutorial; this makes the tutorial more effective. Some lecturers will ‘publish’ answers, or hints, before or after the tutorial, but reading published answers is really no substitute for working on the problems yourself. These answers will be placed on a noticeboard or in a nominated online directory.

• The tutor may raise a problem ‘on the fly’ and you will be encouraged to work out a solution during the session. Do not expect the tutor always to give you the ‘right’ answer, especially if you are not willing to show that you are trying to meet him or her halfway by contributing to the class, or by demonstrating that you have tried to solve the problem yourself.

Sometimes the tutor won’t give you the ‘right answer’ because there isn’t one. Often there may be more than one valid solution. Even when there is only one correct answer, there may be a number of different ways of deriving the answer.

• Tutorials work best if there is discussion. Ask questions if you don’t understand, or find out why the tutor thinks differently from you. Remember, if you don’t understand something, other students won’t either, but they may be afraid to ask, too.

Computer Laboratories

Many subjects arrange laboratory sessions, either at scheduled times per week, or on a ‘drop-in’ basis, in a computer laboratory. You will be expected to work on problems, either given as assignments or issued specifically for that laboratory session. If you need help, some staff will be available. Often you will find that you need to continue your work on the computers outside the hours scheduled for your laboratory sessions.

So long as you do not disturb them unreasonably, be prepared to ask for help from fellow students in the laboratory. On the other hand, be prepared to give help. You will discover that explaining how to do something to somebody else is a good way of crystallising your own ideas. So, it is good to do this, so long as you leave the questioner a bit of thinking to do too.

Online Learning

Online learning refers to using the Internet and World-Wide Web to support your learning. The University maintains a standard online learning system for use in its subjects, called UTSOnline. Many, if not all, of the subjects you study will incorporate some form of online learning.

Some subjects may require you to learn using computer based training (CBT) where a computer program leads you through the material, or where the use of computer software is central to your learning. Other topics may be supported by online web pages, which usually complement the subject’s face-to-face classes. Some subjects may ask for electronic submission of assignments, i.e. submitting the completed assignment to the lecturer as an electronic document, rather than printing out a hardcopy for submission.

Some subjects may also provide you with access to a subject-specific online discussion board. Different lecturers will use discussion boards in different ways. Sometimes a discussion board is there for you to ask questions, and have them answered by either tutors or other students. For this to work, you also have to be willing to post answers (or hints) to other students’ questions as well. In some subjects, postings to the discussion board may even form part of the assessment, to measure your contribution to the learning community (i.e. all students in the subject).

Other kinds of classes

One lecture session and one tutorial and/or lab per week is a fairly "traditional" pattern for teaching computing at university, however not all of your subjects will fit neatly into this pattern. The balance of contribution by the lecturer and you will vary from week to week – some weeks the lecturer might spend more time explaining, and other weeks, you might spend more time doing hands-on exercises. Such subjects place even more responsibility on you as the learner to prepare in advance, contribute during class, ask questions when you don't understand, and generally be responsible for your own learning. The staff are here to help and support your learning, but at the end of the day, what you learn in any subject depends largely on you.

Be prepared to adapt to the various techniques as you meet them in different subjects. Over time, you will find opportunities to experiment with a number of different learning approaches. And remember, if you are having trouble, you can always ask for help.