Day 47 About course planning

About course planning

During our study in the university, it is important for us to develop of a proper plan for the course. The university education structure can be complicated and confusing, so we should carefully choose the units taken in every semester. A well scheduled study plan will not only benefit us in our academic progress, but also our future career after graduation. In order to achieve this, we have to establish the schedule base on a fully understanding of the relative information.

First of all, we must comprehend the course structure.It will be provided by the handbook of the specific degree, and we shall find these information on the university’s website. Australian universities are running the credit-assessment education system, so our ultimate goal is to obtain enough credit points to graduate The course handbook will state the minimum points required to complete the degree. In addition, we must dig deeper in the unit structure. Therefore, we can know how much credit each unit weighted. Normally, the unit outline will list several core units that are compulsory for students to take. The total credit assessment is comprised with these core subjects and other elective units. Hence we have to obtain a general idea about what units should we pick through our university life. We will always get sufficient information on the course from the faculty’s website, otherwise we need to inquire the course advisor for further information.

After we acquired adequate knowledge of our course, it is the time for us to determine our personal goals. We should develop the plan that is appropriate to our personal condition or preference. For instance, we may want to graduate early, thereby we must enroll in the summer semester and participate in more units for the limited period. On the other hand, we may prefer to enjoy our uni-life or ease of our financial pressure, so we can adjust the schedule loosely and grant us more leisure time. Moreover, we need to define the major that we will choose to study. This is crucial for the direction of learning, because it will affect our future career. We have to consider our decision carefully base on our personal-interest combine with the actual application in the work. In my opinion, we should enroll in the units that are associated with professional certification. We can cover the study of these certifications during university, and therefore, it makes our application for these memberships much smoother. Furthermore, we have to utilize the advantages of our prior learning, which may grant us some credit before we start. It will benefit us both economically and academically.

At last, it will be the actual process of unit allocation. At this stage, we can draw a pyramid shape graph to represent the relevance of the units. As we know, there are many subjects require prior completion of the fundamental units. Thereby we must indicate the top of the pyramid, which is the subject needs the most pre-units to enroll in. We put these top units at the bottom of our vertical course plan, then add the ‘bricks’ to support them one by one. However, it is important for us to read the unit schedule, due to some of them are only provided in the specific teaching period. We should always talk to our course advisor for the plan. They are very experienced hence they can be extremely helpful for the planning process.

A perfect plan can give us some advantages at the starting point of the university life. However, the endeavor is the key to our success. We may find the initial plan to become inapplicable as we are making progress, so the minor adjustment during our study is required.