B Planning (2 Viewers)

[Bennyboy123456]

so who is doing this course in 2005?

 

[Bennyboy123456]

hey does anyone know about getting textbooks? how do we know what ones to get?

 

[CMJ]

With textbooks, the lecturers will each hand out a course outline sheet at the first lecture for their course, outlining if there any textbooks that are required or ones they might recommend plus other specific details about the course.

I bought the textbooks last year that were required, and they were quite costly, in hindsight i didn't really use them that much. But it's up to you if you want to buy them, some people either try to get them secondhand or try and borrow the limited copies that are available from the library.

 

[Bennyboy123456]

thanks CMJ.... so do you use the books all the way through the course? how much were the books roughly??? also on top of the lectures... how long do tutorials go for? my timtable alreayd looks fairly hectic especially mondays... was this simlar for your first semester last year? can you talk bout your timetable at all? thanks

 

[CMJ]

Generally, we were meant to read a particular chapter from the textbook say each week. The lecturer will list the chapters that have to be read for each week assigned in the course outline sheet. I found it hard to find time to read the chapters, as assignments take up most of your time (and some of the content can be quite boring), in the end it didn’t really matter to not read all the chapters, as exam questions tended to draw more from lecture material.

The course which was a bit different was PLAN1011 Urban Society, where you had assessable assigned weekly readings, ie. a journal article or a chapter from a book and each week you had to hand in a 1 page summary of the text plus make up some questions which could be used in a tutorial. Urban Society was the only course which had tutorials, and we were split into groups of approx 15 people, and the tute would go for approx 30 mins.

Apart from tutorials we did have labs and a design studio for PLAN1101 Understanding Design. For GEOS1701 Environmental Systems, which was in a science lab, we learnt how to interpret maps and aerial photographs etc. In second semester, we had two computer labs for PLAN1052 Quant Methods, learning how to use a statistics package called SPSS and GEOH2801 Geographical Information Systems, which was how to generate maps on the computer using geographic information.

These were the textbooks and their costs (they were so expensive as they had these CDs with them) that I bought last year:

Semester 1:

- Road from Coorain (a book from the Urban Society weekly reading list) $22.50
- Elemental Geosystems $84.11
- Lab book for GEOS1701 $5.00

Semester 2:

- Getting Started with GIS $94.46
- The Practice of Social Research (I think was about $85)

Yes, first semester last year was quite hectic, second semester was better as we had Fridays off. I think the timetable you have is pretty much the same as mine last year, going on the fbe website. Monday was definitely the busiest, especially if your tute for Urban Society finished at 1pm, and you had to race up that big hill of the uni to get to Matthews on the upper campus for GEOS1701 in time. I found that if a lecture is meant to finish at 6pm, it always finished by 5ish but one particular course PLAN1122 Development Processes in second semester, the lecturer liked to finish at 3:30pm instead of finishing at 6pm!

 

[Bennyboy123456]

thanks CMJ... another question i was thinking was do you need to buy a lap top? and need a certain one or need programs to download? do you suggest to do the comp. course too?

 

[CMJ]

I don't think it is necessary to buy a lap top, only a couple of people in planning last year used lap tops. Actually, last we had to do a 3 credit course on computers but it was scrapped from the first year schedule starting this year, as it was seen to be a waste of time and didn't teach any new skills and as a result Urban Society now becomes 6 credits. Basically, you've just got to know how to use word, excel and powerpoint and you will be right.

 

[Bennyboy123456]

so even though they have that computing course available it shouldnt be there??? and its not worth doing really?

 

[CMJ]

The main problem with that course was that it wasn't really relevant to planning, like it was more for archictecture students learning CAD, and everyone in first year planning considered it a waste of time (and the lecturer wasn't the best either), so the program head decided that this course should be removed from the planning schedule as it wasn't worthwile.

 

[Bennyboy123456]

what do you reccomend taking on the first day of uni???

 

[Li0n]

boxlunch .

 

[Bennyboy123456]

i meant book wise....

 

[Bennyboy123456]

what are assessments like throughout the first year?

 

[CMJ]

Re the first day, just take some writing paper or an exercise book and a couple of pens. The lecturers will give a brief intro to their course and go over the course outline.

Assessments throughout the first year consists mainly of some individual assignments, lab exercises, group assignments, exams and in some courses a participation mark worth about 5-10% (generally u've just got to turn up to the lectures regularly to score well). No assignment or exam was worth more than 35% of the assessment mark in either semester. In semester 1, there was 3 end of semester exams and one mid session exam and for semester 2 there were was also 3 exams.

I found that there were more assignments in semester 1, less in semester 2 but some of these were harder and more work like the group report that you do after the 3 day field trip to Taree as part of the course Local Planning.

 

[Bennyboy123456]

ahk cool thanks... i heard the planning course doesnt have as many exams as other courses may, is this true? also with the timetable provided there are no tutes... where will they fit in, it will make it a faily long week at uni... now long do they usually go for? cheers

 

[CMJ]

Yes, we do not do as many exams as other courses and also a good thing is that that they are not worth a huge chunk of the assessment.

The tute for Urban Society (lasting for approx 30mins) fits within the 4 hour timeslot on the Monday. The 2 hour GEOS lab is allocated i think on the fbe timetable (http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/students/timetables.shtml) website but not on my.unsw version. In semester 2, the labs for Quant Methods (1 hour) and GIS (2 hour) are allocated by the lecturer to fit in with the timetable.

 

[Bennyboy123456]

how often do you go on filedtrips, as in out of the uni??? how often would you say each semester??

 

[CMJ]

In semester one, there was just an afternoon field trip to look at a site in Holsworthy. In semester two there was the 3 day field trip up to Taree and Wingham where you conduct surveys with the residents and study the town centre of Wingham. This fieldtrip does have a lot work in it and after it as well, but you do have plenty of laughs along the way.

 

[Eman Resu]

im planning to do this 2006 =] is the course getting more popular? 60 places doesnt seem like alot, im amazed there rnt many ppl there...is this due to popularity? difficulty? cost? the course seems almost to good to b tru

 

[Josie]

It's really good, I've got a friend who does it.

It's entirely up to popularity, it's small numbers, but a lower UAI because planning isn't as popular.