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Organisation

The Director of Education is in charge of teaching. The Senior Tutor is available to help with any issue which affects you.

Any student contemplating changing to a different degree course offered by the Physics Department should discuss the possibility with their personal tutor and also see the Director of Studies as soon as possible. Changes become progressively more of a problem as the year goes on and will not be allowed by the Department, except under exceptional circumstances, after week 8.

Teaching

Teaching is by lectures, examples classes and tutorials. Lectures and tutorials are normally given by members of staff, while the examples classes are usually given by postgraduate students or postdoctoral research fellows.

Towards the end of each module you will be asked to fill in a questionnaire, and at the end of the academic year you will be asked to complete a further questionnaire about the year as a whole. We use your responses to these questionnaires to help us identify areas where improvements in our teaching can be made. It is inevitable from the timing of these questionnaires that the responses can only be used to change things in future years. If you feel that there are serious problems that should be addressed immediately you should discuss the matter with the person giving the module, or with one or more of the following people: your Personal Tutor, Nicholas d'Ambrumenil (the Director of Studies), Michael Pounds (Director of Student Experience) or one of your Staff Student Liaison Committee representatives.

Academic Tutorials

Your Personal Tutor will be your Academic Tutor during your first year. They will monitor your academic progress and will see you weekly for tutorials. These will be used to extend your interest in your subject and to develop your ability to communicate information and ideas. Tutors also use tutorials to help students to prepare for the various examinations. Problems with lecture modules should be dealt with in the first instance in the examples classes (see below) or by going to see the Lecturer, but Tutors will help with general points causing difficulty. Your tutor also deals with the additional worksheets which are marked for credit and count towards the mark for the Tutorial.

Tutorial Mark

You will see that there is an item on your course regulations called Tutorial. This mark is based on your performance on two separate activities: a subset of the physics problems which are marked for credit, and five worksheets.

Physics Problems and Examples Classes

Each physics lecturer issues a set of problems on their module. You are expected to make a serious attempt to solve all the problems on these sheets, as problem solving forms a vital part of the learning process. Formal assessment is based only on a sub-set of these problems (the starred ones) for the core physics modules: Physics Foundations, Electricity and Magnetism, Classical Mechanics and Relativity, Quantum Phenomena. Some of these will use MasteringPhysics, which is the computer-based learning package associated with the first year textbook. Others require written answers to be handed in to examples class tutors (via their pigeon hole) by 12:00 on the Monday of the week ('n+1') following the one in which the question was set ('week n'). Please note that work submitted late will receive zero.

Your answers will be marked and handed back to you at the beginning of each Examples Class. In the Examples Class the tutor will go over all assessed and some unassessed questions for week n. The first Examples Classes of the academic year will therefore be in the second week of the autumn term. The Department considers it important that students attempt the questions set, and for this reason approximately 25% of the credit for each solution will be awarded to all serious attempts, irrespective of the correctness of the answer.

The Worksheets

The worksheets cover material which you may have met in some form or other, but which it is important to understand, as it will often be assumed by other modules. You should hand in your answers to your tutor.

Option Choices

More modules can be taken than the minimum required. Please see the information on unusual options for further information.

Successful Study

Employers view graduates as people with the potential to organise and manage. This expectation is based partly on the fact that, in order to obtain a good degree, a student has to organise and manage their own time and skills effectively. If you can organise yourself, there is a good chance you will be able to manage others!


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