Guidance for managing your coursework and workload. Time Management Timetable When you know the times of your lectures, practical classes and tutorials, make yourself a timetable. Deadlines & Key dates Keep a diary and note the dates when essays and tutorial assignments must be handed in, exam dates and so on. Teaching locations Many courses have occasional lectures or practicals in unusual locations, e.g. in the Computing Laboratory. Keep a note of these in your diary. Balancing work and leisure Organise your time to achieve a good balance between work and leisure activities. You'll be amazed how many "spare" hours there are during the day, when you have breaks between lectures, etc. If you spend these spare hours studying, you will have less work to catch up on in the evenings. Downtime Make sure that you have genuine downtime. At least one evening during the week, and at least one day at the weekend when you do no academic work. You will soon find that you need this sort of schedule, to keep healthy and happy, and your academic progress will benefit from it. Course Requirements Most courses use in-course assessment and degree examination to reach the final mark for the course. You will need to pass both the exam and the in-course assessment elements, so that averaging a pass mark will not necessarily be sufficient. In some courses there may be additional requirements, for example, regular attendance. All the Biology courses will provide details of what you need to do to pass the course in the appropriate Course Guide. You should study the requirements carefully. Course Guides Failing to Meet Course Requirements If you fail to meet a specific requirement to pass the course but average more than 40, your mark will be returned to Registry as (say) 48U (unclassified). This means you have failed even though your overall mark was 48. In such cases, you will receive instructions on what you need to do in order to pass because you have either failed to reach a minimum standard in the Degree exam or in the in-course assessment. Exams First semester courses are examined at the end of the semester, there is little time for revision after teaching has finished. Leaving revision for all courses to the last-minute means you may not have enough time to complete it satisfactorily. We strongly advise to keep your work and revision up-to-date and not leave it until the last minute. Related links Institute for Academic Development Study Skills and Support This article was published on 2024-06-17
