Supporting Study
Your go-to for support options, study resources, fun stuff and general help with being a student at UTS.
Independent learning
While Peer Leaders can discuss topics relating to your assignments and can work on similar tasks to assist you in your understanding of them, they don’t work on assessable assignments. Our whole ethos is about preparing you for independent learning, so you can complete your own assignments.
It’s not about giving you the answer– you’ll be expected to contribute and work together to find answers. As we like to tell our students: “We don’t give you the answer; but you will leave here knowing the answer.”
One-hour sessions
In a typical one-hour session, you’ll compare notes, work through problems and past exam questions, share study tips and discuss course material with other students, and your Peer Leader. Remember, leaders aren’t there to teach you – they’re there to help you learn.
This video showcases what U:PASS is and this is the current timetable.
Requests for longer sessions come up frequently in our feedback, but we tend to believe university is about independent study. Instead, we recommend you meet up with the friends you make in U:PASS to continue studying the material together. For the same reasons, we try to avoid offering U:PASS in upper year subjects.
Don’t forget though: for individual tutoring, you can always try the Peer Tutoring service, as well as the range of academic support offered at UTS.
Optional attendance
U:PASS sessions are optional; there is no obligation to attend. We do take attendance each session to evaluate the effectiveness of the program but it remains confidential and isn’t released until after results are published. That said, just about everyone can benefit from learning new and more effective ways to study, deepen their learning and improve their grades.
Whether you are struggling in the subject or not, we’d love to see you at a session.
One more thing: Each U:PASS leader puts a great deal of effort into their preparation; it really helps them if you let them know you can’t attend a certain week. That said, the more you can attend during the semester, the better.
Online and offline sessions
- We adhere to all university and government COVID-19 guidelines in our planning (e.g. face-to-face sessions may be capped to respect social distancing rules)
- Feedback indicates that students prefer face to face sessions, but online is still popular for its convenience and accessibility.
- Therefore we try to have a combination of face to face and online sessions in each subject, but other factors can impact these decisions (e.g. COVID-19 guidelines, room availability)
- If a subject is completely online, it is likely that U:PASS will be too
- If leaders are not able to come to campus, their sessions will be run online
- All classes are available to attend without registration
What can you expect from a U:PASS session?
- U:PASS sessions are not tutorials
- U:PASS will help motivate you to learn independently
- Learning will involve group activities
- Everyone's input is respected
- You will need to work hard and learn, but still have fun
- You will need to contribute to a productive learning environment
- The leader will not re-teach the content - they are going to facilitate and guide your learning
- The leader will ask me to refer to the lecture notes or textbooks, to assist me to find the answer
- The leader will not help with directly assessable material
- U:PASS can only cover some of the content; you still need to work independently outside of U:PASS
- The leader does not know what is in the exam and may not be able to answer every question
- The leader is a student like me (and cannot give out their private contact details)