A Guide to University Life: Step 3: University Classes

As I mentioned in my last posts, at university you are entering a completely new period of your life. You have to get used to new organizational practices and you have lots of vacations. Another special feature of university is the number of different classes you can take.

At school, you have the same subjects several times a week, and each lesson lasts 50 minutes. There you are exposed to mainly one kind of class: teacher-centered teaching. This means that the teacher introduces one topic after another and offers explanations and illustrations. Then, you do exercises and participate actively. These classes involve homework, classroom participation and regular exams. They form the basis for your final grade. In school, there are only a few subjects without written tests, like art, PE or manual training. And in school, daily attendance is an unavoidable necessity.

At university, in contrast, you attend each class only once a week, but for a length of 90 minutes. Besides, you can choose from a number of different kinds of classes. This means that there are several categories of university classes. And each category has a particular token. You will see that the academic subjects carry short labels in addition to their individual titles. They determine the type of class and tell you how time-consuming they will be. Normally, the labels also point to the kind of examination you will have – whether you have to do tests, give presentations or write papers. To make this labeling system even more complex, the tokens vary from university department to department. In the beginning, you will be wondering why these labels are necessary altogether. Is the only aim to confuse you? In this case the answer is no. There is a particular reason for the labels. They tell you about the amount of credits you get for each subject. For classes with the same labels you will get the same amount of credits.

So far, so good. Let me give you some examples to underline my point. In English Studies at the University of Salzburg you can take courses like VO, PS, UE and SE, which you can look up in the curriculum of the English Department. The abbreviation VO stands for a lecture course. It is often an introductory class with a more general topic, like an introduction to English and American literature. You will notice that such a course is most different from school lessons. The professor is reciting his or her topic and is mainly the only one who does the talking. You don’t have to attend each week mandatorily. This means that you can be absent any time you like. However, bear in mind that you need to get hold of the lecture notes anyhow. Nobody will check your attendance, but you have to be sure to pick up the subject matter on your own. Generally, these courses aren’t very time-consuming because you won’t have to do a lot of tasks during the term. You need to do some reading at the most. A special characteristic is that you will be assessed on one single end-term exam. There are mostly written exams and only a few oral ones. You either take it at the end of the term or at the beginning of the next one. Mostly, you will even have the possibility of a third examination date. This means that if you fail the exam on one date, you can try it again on the next. So your final grade exclusively depends on the one end-term exam. And it is rather unlikely to improve this grade … or to deteriorate it.

If you take a look at the other courses, proseminars (PS) and tutorial lessons (UE), you will recognize that they are very similar to each other and that there aren’t many differences to school subjects. You have to be present regularly, so that you are allowed to miss only twice. Otherwise you fail the class. You have to hand in weekly assignments; you have to give a presentation on a chosen issue and write an academic paper. Alternatively, there is an exam, or even two. One positive aspect is that you receive more credits for proseminars and tutorial lessons than for lecture courses. Another advantage is that you have more possibilities of participating and so it can be more interesting. It depends, of course, on how enthusiastic you are about participating … Since all those tasks mentioned above contribute to your final grade, your assessment doesn’t depend on one single exam. Consequently, you have various opportunities to show your skills to the professor. However, you have to do a lot of regular work.

Last, you can take seminars (SE) which are the most challenging classes in English. Because by the time you are allowed to do these classes, you are already well advanced in your studies. So you have to show perfectly sophisticated skills. You either deal with specific topics of a language phenomenon or with particular aspects of a certain literary period or author. You have to hand in regular homework and you have to read a lot of texts or books. Then, your professor expects highly intelligent remarks on the reading material in every lesson. Besides, you choose one topic or aspect of the term schedule which you present in class and you have to hand in a proper academic paper with at least 20 pages. This means that you will be stuck with having to do a lot of work just for this course: you have to contribute a lot, do a good presentation and write a sophisticated paper. All this makes such courses very challenging.

In order to show you the varying class types or labels within the university itself I want to refer to the Department of Sociology. There are lecture courses just like in English. The aim is again to provide you with a more general knowledge about overall sociological phenomena. Then, there are special classes, labeled KU. There you get to know more details about the topics of lecture courses. Normally, they are very similar to proseminars of the English Department because you have to attend and participate regularly and you have to do assignments, presentations or tests. However, such classes are more practical than those at the English Department. You take, for example, classes on statistics where you will learn how to calculate with and interpret numerical data of surveys.

Next, you can take a kind of practical course (PK) which offers a huge amount of practice-orientation. It is basically like working in a real job. You have to fulfill realistic tasks, such as carrying out surveys. With the assistance of university professors you meet clients, you design the questionnaire and you do the interviews as well as the whole interpretational work. Such classes last about four hours a week. So the workload will be immense, but you receive lots of credits. And these lessons provide a valuable variation to all the theoretical classes you mostly have at university.

Last, there are seminars (SE) again. You have to be present regularly, you have to give a presentation on a chosen issue and you need to write a paper. Classes often deal with topics of special sociological fields like Sociology of Tourism or Criminal Sociology, offering interesting insights into their individual characteristics. The only difference to English seminars is that they aren’t the most challenging classes in Sociology. These are the above mentioned practical classes.

So you see that university is full of variation. The different types of subjects allow you a diversified class schedule. You can choose among differing degrees of workload and specialization. It will help you to keep the effort balanced, which can be an important factor for your success in your studies.