Hi all! Although I haven’t received grades back for any of my exams yet, I’ve now completely finished the term and received feedback on all my coursework, so it seems like a reasonable time to discuss the observations I’ve made about / tips for being a student when it comes to academic performance, that weren’t in the orientation guides or sessions (for my experience anyway).

This got a bit long for a single post, so I broke it up into part 1 and part 2. Part 1 (this post) is more general info about how courses work. Part 2 will have details on random specific things, like how you’re expected to use essay titles.

1. You do 2–3 long assignments, rather than a lot of small ones. Although this probably depends on the department — my flatmates who were math students seemed to have a fair number of quizzes or something — the standard seems to be that you have one or two pieces of coursework, and then a final exam or paper, and the whole 100% of your grade rests on those 2–3 things. On the one hand, this can make the assignments you do have more stressful, but on the other, it can also be a nice break from the constant stream of graded discussion posts, writing assignments worth 10-20% of your grade, etc.
2. Independent study needs are assignment specific. They explain in the orientation how the academic system is different in general — instead of being told what to do all the time, you’re expected to be self-disciplined and research according to your interests within the class, and then have material ready when an exam prompt or the like is given. However, that doesn’t mean you need to stress about doing lots of extra reading in every class the whole time: the specific coursework assignments (or least the ones I had) will actually tell you how much research you’re expected to pull in from outside the class reading. For example, my social psych course heavily depended on independent study, while the “cite two secondary sources in addition” requirement for the essay was about the only independent reading required for my film analysis class.
3. Grading isn’t just done by the instructor. Departments seem to be more of a team effort here — everyone in the same academic year is taking the same classes, instructors know when other modules’ exams are, conveners seem to be “people who are primarily responsible for organizing the module’s material and delivery” rather than individual people who are solely responsible for every aspect of a course from start to finish, and your coursework for a given class may be graded by other department faculty, rather than the person who’s actually been giving lectures. I haven’t encountered any issues with this, but I figure it’s useful info to know, if only so that you don’t tailor the details of an essay to your specific course convener’s apparent style and then get surprised when the essay is graded by a completely different faculty member.

That’s it for part 1!