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    Content guidelines and faculty editor resources

    The Course structure and Course requirements fields

    Using standard layouts

    Course structures and requirements are presented in the Handbook in a number of ways, including, but not confined to the following:

    • 'blanket' statement/s such as "Students must complete any two level five units offered by the faculty."
    • simple list of the required units (this may also include a statement such as "or any other unit offered in/by the faculty”)
    • list of required units delineated by various combinations of year, semester, core units and electives
    • series of statements of rules and restrictions, with or without specified units
    • statement of the sequence of units to be studied.

    Furthermore, any of the above are often duplicated under campus/discipline/stream etc subheadings within the Course structure/Course requirements entries.

    KEY POINTS:

    It is important to be unambiguous and consistent.

    • Course structure and requirements statements must be unambiguous as these are the core of the University's requirements for completion of a course in order to receive an award and inform students' expectations.

    • Whichever layouts for course structures/requirements are used by a faculty, they must be applied consistently to all courses with similar structure in that faculty.

    The differences between 'structure' and 'requirements'

    Both of these fields should be filled out in the Handbook for all courses as outlined below.

    Course structure

    This is an overall statement and should indicate the nature of the key components of the course, eg that there may be a specified number of units and whether this includes core units/electives, a fieldwork component, a research thesis etc.

    EXAMPLE:

    The course structure has three main components:

    • a set of core units which provide an introduction to the key areas of commerce
    • a major in either economics or econometrics and business statistics

    • eight open electives which may be taken from any Faculty of Business and Economics programs and campuses, or from disciplines offered by another faculty.

    Course requirements

    These are the detailed statement of exactly what must be studied (or submitted in the case of 100 per cent thesis research degrees) and includes actual unit references where applicable - either by unit code and name, or another designate such as units from a given department etc. An (abridged) example is given below.

    EXAMPLE:

    Level one
    A total of eight units must be completed.

    Core units

    • ENG1060 Computing for engineers
    • ENG1091 Mathematics for engineering

    Select at least four units from:

    • ENG1010 Process systems analysis
    • ENG1020 Engineering structures

    Foundation units

    Students who have not completed VCE units 3 and 4 of Chemistry or Physics and/or Specialist mathematics are required to select one or two appropriate foundation units(s) from:

    • ENG1070 Foundation chemistry
    • ENG1080 Foundation physics

    Elective units

    Select none, one or two units from:

    • ENG1061 Engineering profession
    • ENG1071 Chemistry for engineering

    Total: 48 points

    Standards for listing requirements

    List specific units by code in alpha-numeric order before ‘option' statements (eg 6 points of arts units) and in order of increase, eg "6 points of arts units; 12 points of science electives”. Include the unit title. An example is outlined below:

    EXAMPLE:

    Year 1

    • ABC1234 Title of unit
    • ABC2345 Title of unit
    • BCD1234 Title of unit
    • BCD2345 Title of unit
    • 6 points of arts units
    • 6 points of law units
    • 12 points of science electives

    NOTE: Regarding unit titles, follow the Style Guide checklist (DO NOT use 'title case').

    Courses with multiple areas of study - discipline/stream etc variations

    The CUPID areas of study module allows faculties to outline the requirements for courses with multiple divisions by discipline/major/spicialisation/stream etc (collectively 'areas of study').

    Entries in this module are still under development by some faculties. The eventual aim is to have one Handbook entry - in the relevant faculty's areas of study section - for a given discipline, and to link the 'Requirements' field from all relevant course entries to the discipline, thus allowing annual updates/edits to be made once to the discipline entry rather than in multiple course entries, thus reducing the potential for error. This model has been the norm for the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science for some years. The model will only apply to relevant courses - some courses may need to retain 'full requirements' entries.

    Usage of the module will also allow the linking of Course Finder course entries to areas of study via the Course Finder 'Broad areas of study' link.