Class 101: What to expect in your Classes

NOTE: Students will not be required to attend classes, labs or tutorials in person during the Fall 2020 Term. All classes, lectures, and course events will be offered online. More info: uofteng.ca/covid19

 

73 Days to go…!

Welcome back to the blog!

 

Today I wanted to talk about what you can expect about the way your courses will be structured in Engineering. I know for many incoming first-year students your summer might just be getting started now and reading about classes and homework is probably the last thing you want to be doing, but I promise you the sooner you understand what to expect, the less nervous you’ll feel about starting University altogether.

As a first-year engineering student, you’ll be taking 5-6 courses a semester if enrolled in full-time studies, and 3 or fewer if enrolled part-time. While the topics and styles of instruction may vary across courses, all engineering courses tend to have about the same breakdown in their overall structure. I like to consider this breakdown similar to an ice cream cone with (3) scoops. While some scoops might be bigger than others, they work together to create a delicious, and well-rounded experience.

1.Lectures

Photo of lecture
A first year design lecture (APS111 for Core8/TrackOne and ESC101 for EngSci); Source: Mirjana Mijalkovic

The first and largest component of your courses are your lectures. Typically in a lecture you’ll find yourself in a large room with about 1-3 instructors and up to several hundred students. On one side of the room the instructors teach in front of a backboard or screen, and across from them are students sitting at tables, listening and taking notes. I think the idea of a lecture is the first thing that pops into people’s heads when they imagine what a University course is like, and that’s very understandable. This style of learning has existed at U of T since the school was first founded, and is popular in post-secondary schools worldwide. All courses in your first year of Engineering will have some aspect of a lecture component. Expect about 2-3 hours of lecture per course per week spaced out in one hour sessions. Since U of T is semestered, courses only run for 3 months + 1 month for exams, so there is a lot of content that needs to get covered every week. This also means that your instructors will spend most of the lecture period teaching and explaining concepts, rather than answering individual questions. Sometimes at the end of the sessions there might be a few minutes to take questions, but the best place to really get your questions answered is during your tutorials.

2.Tutorials

Tutorial instructor writing on blackboard
Tutorial for CIV102: Structures and Materials; Source: Mirjana Mijalkovic

You’ve completed your 3 whole hours of lecture for the week, and you’ve probably got questions, right? It’s virtually impossible for your instructors to be able to fit in time to teach all the course content, walk through example problems step-by-step AND still be able to answer every student’s questions. Fear not, for this is why we have what are called Tutorials. 

Tutorials follow a more similar style to what you might be familiar with from high school. There are about 20-40 students and one Teaching Assistant (TA) in a tutorial room, and these sessions tend to run for an hour. During a tutorial, your TA will go over any questions you might have about what was taught during lecture. Since tutorials are smaller than lectures, there’s more of an opportunity to ask questions on concepts you may not have completely understood, or would like to learn more about beyond the scope of the course itself. 

Advice for tutorials: Ask a lot of questions! One of my biggest regrets in first year was that I didn’t ask questions in all of my tutorials because I was afraid of getting embarrassed for not knowing something. Don’t be like me! The TA’s in your tutorials are very knowledgeable in the content they’re teaching you, and just because they might seem like geniuses doesn’t mean you’re expected to be the same. It’s their job to support your development in the course, so the best thing you can do for yourself is tell them what areas you’re confused about or might need more explanation.

3.Practicals

Circuits in a practical course
Circuits lab for ECE110: Electrical Fundamentals; Source: Mirjana Mijalkovic

You’ve learned the course concepts from lecture, you’ve tried them out in problem sets and asked questions during tutorials…so what’s next? The third and final component of your classes (and probably my favourite) are your practicals, or what many people know better as, labs. Practicals/Labs tend to be the most fun part of a course because they’re very hands-on and you can be creative in how you approach the lab’s tasks. Oftentimes you’re not working toward finding one numerical solution, rather, you’re making observations and using real engineering equipment to better understand the world around you.

So how do they work? Your instructor or somebody with a title like “Lab Instructor” or “Lab TA” will share a pre-assignment that you need to complete in order to be allowed to start your lab. Sometimes the pre-assignment might be an online safety training quiz, or sometimes you might be asked to solve some pre-calculations that’ll be useful when you work through the lab itself. On the day of your assigned practical session you would show up to your lab room, and a TA would check that you’ve completed your pre-work before letting you get started on the lab.

Depending on the size of the lab space, the number of students in one session, and the complexity of the lab equipment, there could be anywhere between 1-8 TA’s present during the lab. Their jobs aren’t to give you direct answers like a tutorial TA might, but rather to guide you toward coming to your own conclusions. The purpose of practicals is to get experience applying your math and science knowledge to real-world applications to help make you a better engineer in the future.

When doing labs, the best advice I can give is to document the work you’re doing, whether it’s taking a picture or video, or writing some notes. A lot of instructors like to ask questions on midterms and final exams about topics from your labs, so writing down just a few notes every time you finish a lab is a really easy way to earn marks down the road in assessments.

Practicals don’t happen as often as your lectures and tutorials, ranging anywhere between once a week, to as infrequently as once every 2-3 weeks in order to give you time to work on your write-up or “post-lab” assignment.

 

At the end of the day, no two courses you take will be identical, You might find that some won’t have tutorials or won’t have practicals, but you’ll always have an opportunity to ask questions and get help in some capacity. Ultimately it’s up to you to be responsible for making sure you know how your instructors structure their courses so you’re prepared for your next lecture, tutorial, and practical.

 

Lingo Legend:

Teaching Assistant (TA) – The people who run your tutorials and practicals. They tend to be graduate or post-graduate students studying in fields related to the particular course(s) they’re involved with. A lot of TA’s in our Faculty actually completed their undergraduate education in U of T Engineering and are great to talk to about research and academic opportunities after you graduate.