Subjects and academic information

How to use the UTS Handbook 

If you are looking to research the subjects available at UTS, we would recommend starting first with the Study Abroad and Exchange subject guides which can be found on our webpage under subjects and academic information. Please refer to our video on the subject guides more information on how to use these.

Once you’ve watched the subject guides video, it is time to learn about the UTS Handbook. The UTS Handbook is an essential tool that you will want to become familiar with. This is because the handbook lists the subjects available at UTS, and gives you detailed descriptions for each subject.

So, how do you use the UTS Handbook?

The handbook is an online resource, so the first step is to navigate to the appropriate website. You will need to search the term UTS Handbook within your preferred search engine, or alternatively you can go directly to the website by typing in handbook.uts.edu.au in the address bar.

Now we are at the front page of the UTS Handbook. On the first page, you will see a list of the different disciplines offered at UTS, also known as course areas. 

If you are trying to study subjects at UTS that are similar to the ones you might take for your degree at your home university, then we recommend that you first click on the discipline that corresponds with the discipline that you study at home. For example, if you study a Bachelor of Marketing at your home university, you will want to click on Business.

Once you click on the right discipline, you can either click on this subject link here to see a full list of subjects related to that discipline, or you can click on courses that are related to that discipline by clicking undergraduate courses or postgraduate courses.

We recommend that you click on either undergraduate courses or postgraduate courses, whichever are relevant to you, because if you click on this subject link here you will get a full list of both postgraduate and undergraduate subjects. This can be confusing, and not all subjects may be appropriate for what you study.

If you click on undergraduate or postgraduate courses, you will be directed to a page that has a full list of the courses that undergraduate or postgraduate students can study within that discipline. We recommend that you click the course that is most similar to what you study at home. This may take some trial and error, as UTS may not label the degree the exact same way. For example, you may study a Bachelor of Marketing at home, but there is no Bachelor of Marketing at UTS. In this case, you should click on the different courses to find something similar. The course you study at home may not be a full degree at UTS, but it may be a stream or major within another degree. For example, if you study a Bachelor of Marketing, you will find that if you click Bachelor of Business and then go to the course program section, that marketing is listed as one of the majors you can take within the Bachelor of Business.

Each course page is structured a little bit differently, but essentially within the course page you will be able to find subjects that are related to that course by clicking on different links. For example, if I want to study marketing related subjects, I can navigate to the marketing submajor section on this page, and I will see a list of marketing subjects.

You can also find subjects related to a particular major or submajor, such as marketing, by going to the side of the handbook and clicking study package directory. After you click on study package directory, you can click on major or submajor and see an alphabetical list of the majors and subjmajors offered at UTS.

Once you are on a page that lists subjects, such as this one, you can click on the number next to the subject and you will be directed to the subject information.

Once you are on a subject information page, you should pay attention to the requisites. If you see requisites listed, it means that you will need to have studied that requisite or something very similar at your home university in order to take this subject at UTS.

You will also notice a section on the subject pages called “access conditions” – don’t worry about those, as they don’t apply to study abroad and exchange students. It’s just the requisites that you’ll want to pay attention to.

If there are lots of requisites next to a subject, that means that it requires a lot of prior knowledge in order to take the subject and is probably an advanced subject. If there are no requisites listed, then the subject is most likely an entry level subject that doesn’t require background knowledge.

Another thing to notice on the subject page is whether it says the subject is an undergraduate or postgraduate subject. Undergraduate students can’t take postgraduate subjects, so make sure you are aware of this when you are reading the subject page.

You should also look at the number of UTS credits a subject is. Most subjects at UTS are worth 6cps but Arts and Social Science subjects and Law subjects tend to be 8 credit points. When you are a student at UTS the minimum number of credits you can take is 18, and the maximum is 26 credit points. The usual full load at UTS is 24 credit points. You may need to take a mix of 6 and 8 credit point subjects. For information about converting UTS credits to other credit systems, take a look at the subjects and academic information page of the UTS Study Abroad and Exchange Website.

If you want to find out when a subject is offered, the subject page may or may not list this information. Even it does, it is always best to use the timetable planner website to double check when a subject is running.  

For detailed information about a subject including the structure of the subject, you can click on the link called detailed subject description. While the main subject page gives you a brief overview of the subject, the detailed subject description is what you will want to take to your home university if they need information about the subject you would like to study at UTS.

Finally, if you would like to study electives at UTS that are not related to your degree, we recommend that you start researching these by checking out the electives subject guide. If this doesn’t list what you are looking for then you can go back to the main page of the UTS Handbook and click on any course area you are interested in, and search for subjects within that course area. An exception to this is for education – only students who study education at their home university should study education at UTS, because education subjects use a different academic calendar than most other subjects. This can be confusing, so as a rule we recommend that if you don’t study education at your home university, do not study education at UTS. And if you do study education at your home university and need to take education subjects at UTS, only pick education subjects and don’t try and cross disciplines. 

Thank you for watching this video, we hope it has been a useful introduction to the UTS Handbook and how to use it.

How to use the UTS Timetable Planner 

The UTS Timetable Planner is a tool that allows students to view subject timetables and plan out their schedules. As such, it is a useful resource for Study Abroad and Exchange students who are researching the subjects they might want to take at UTS. Other useful tools to help you with this process are the Study Abroad and Exchange Subject Guides and the UTS Handbook. If you haven’t already watch our videos on these topics, we recommend that you watch them first and then come back to this video later.

Now, what is the timetable planner, and how do you use it? The timetable planner is a tool that allows you to search the subjects that you are interested in, and find out when these subjects and their classes are running.

In order to get to the timetable planner, simply type the term “UTS Timetable Planner” into your preferred web browser. Click on the first site that comes up, and then click on the button that says “View the UTS Timetable Planner”. Once you are at this webpage, you will notice that there is a search bar. To use this search bar, simply type in the subject code of the subject you are interested in, and press search. Once you do this, the subject will populate on the left hand side of the page, under “selected subjects”. The subject will be listed with the subject code first, followed by a string of letters and numbers. In order to effectively use the timetable planner to plan out your prospective schedule, you need to understand what these letters and numbers mean.

So, how do you figure this out? If you navigate to the top right corner of the timetable planner, you will see there is a button called “help”. If you click on the help button, you will be directed to a guide which explains what the symbols we looked at before mean. In this video, I’ll walk you through the most relevant codes for Study Abroad and Exchange Students.

The first code you will need to become familiar with is the session code. If a subject number has “AUT” listed after it, this means that it is taught in the Australian Autumn. If a subject number has “SPR” after it, it is taught in the Australian Spring. As a Study Abroad or Exchange student, you will need to take subjects that run in either Autumn or Spring, depending on when you will be studying at UTS. The seasons are different in the Northern Hemisphere, so make sure you keep that in mind. Autumn session at UTS is between February and June, and Spring session at UTS is between August and December.

The next code you will want to be aware of when using the timetable planner is the campus code. As a Study Abroad or Exchange Student, you want to take subjects at either Ultimo or Moore Park, and not anywhere else. Ultimo is where most classes at UTS are located, and Moore Park is a well connected 30 minutes away by light rail. When you are using the timetable planner, you want to make sure that there is either a “U” for Ultimo or a “MP” for “Moore Park” after the session code. You will need to take subjects at either of these campuses, and remember to factor in travel time when thinking about your potential schedule.

The next code to be aware of is the study attendance mode code. “S” after the campus code means that the subject has a standard attendance mode. “B” after the campus code means that the subject is taught in block mode. Most subjects will be taught in standard mode, so if

you are considering a subject that is in block mode please contact the Study Abroad and Exchange team for further information.

Now that you understand how to read a subject listing, let’s go back to the timetable planner. In order to plan out your prospective schedule, type the codes of the subjects that you are interested in into the search bar, and then select on the left hand side the subject that is right for you. For example, let’s pretend that I want to study law subjects at UTS in Spring.

First I am going to type in the code of a subject (70617), and then out of the options presented on the left hand side, tick the subject that contains “SPR” for Spring. I do not want to tick the subject that contains AUT, as I will not be at UTS in Autumn. Once I’ve ticked my first subject, I will put in the code for the other subject that I am interested in (70104). I’ll then select on the left hand side the Spring offering. It is important to note that sometimes when you search for a subject, only one offering is presented, and it may not be for the session that you are interested in. For example, if I type in the subject number 79015, I can see that the subject 79015 is only offered in Autumn. Because I will be studying at UTS in Spring and not in Autumn, I need to consider a different subject.

Another thing to note when searching in the timetable planner is that sometimes when you input a subject code from the handbook into the search bar, nothing comes up. This means that the subject is not being offered, and will not become available during that academic year. The Timetable Planner is only updated once a year in October, and once released is final.

Once you have selected subjects that are running in the appropriate session and campus, you can click “Show Timetable” to see the schedule for those subjects. The timetable that pops up may look a little bit intimidating, but don’t worry too much – the timetable shows all the times that activities for a subject are running, and you won’t need to attend all of these times.

To get a clearer view of the timetable, you can either click the “show as list” button on the right hand side, or you can click the “download this timetable” button next to the print symbol. For the purposes of this video, I’m going to click the “download this timetable” button.

Once you click the “download this timetable” button, an excel file will generate. The excel file lists all of the possible times that the subjects you have selected are running, including times for the different activities.

Lets look at subject 70617 first. If you look at the “Group” column, you can see that this subject has both lectures and tutorials. This is standard for UTS, however some subjects may have different formats such as computer labs or studios. To understand what the different codes in this column mean, go back to the “Help” section of the timetable planner and scroll to the bottom. Under the activities section, you will see a key to the different codes.

Once you understand these codes, you can go back to your excel spreadsheet.

Because you are only researching subjects, at this stage the most important thing to keep in mind is that you won’t be able to participate in subjects that have clashing lecture times. If lecture times do clash, you will need to consider a different subject.

In order to figure out if lecture times will clash, I recommend looking at the group column, and highlighting all rows that include “l-e-c”. For each subject, you will need to go to one activity for each lecture.

Let’s look at my first subject, subject 70617, as an example. This subject has five lecture groups; lecture one, two, three, four, and five. Because each of these groups say activity one next to them, you will need to attend all of these lecture groups.

Now let’s look at a different subject, subject 70104. We can see that for this subject there are two lecture ones, and one lecture two. For lecture one, you will only need to attend one of these times. For lecture two, there is only one time option, so you will need to attend that option.

Once you understand how many lecture groups and activities a subject has, you can plan out a prospective schedule by checking to make sure subjects don’t have lectures at the same time. To figure this out, you will want to look in the columns called “day”, “time”, “duration”, and “date”. If subjects do have lectures that are running at the same time, you will need to reconsider subject choices, because lectures are mandatory and you won’t be able to attend clashing lectures.

In regards to tutorials and other activities, don’t worry about these too much right now. For now, the most important thing to consider is lectures and making sure they don’t clash.

As mentioned, if subjects do have lecture times that clash, you won’t be able to take both subjects. To find a new subject, you can either enter a specific code into the UTS timetable planner like before, and then see when that subject runs, or you can use the advanced filters to find any subject that suits your prospective timetable. Simply input your preferences into the advanced filter, and then select the day and time that suits your schedule, and press search. On the left hand side you will see all courses that meet those parameters. It is important to note that even though these subjects may be at the right time, they may not be suitable for you in terms of course level and prerequisites. Always make sure you read through the UTS Handbook and talk to your home university before making any subject choices.

We hope that you have enjoyed this video about the UTS Timetable planner, and that you now have a better idea of how to start planning your possible schedule. As a reminder, the UTS timetable planner should be used as a guide only, as it is possible that classes will fill or certain times won’t be available during the session you are studying at UTS. Once you are enrolled at UTS, you will be able to make more concrete decisions related to your schedule.