You are here: ITL / Projects & Planning / The Sydney Graduate / Implementation / Curriculum Resources / Foundation skills

Foundation skills

This page allows you to search for workshops or short courses that help with Foundation skills such as English or computer skills. If you are an academic and you want to submit a case study of your Unit of Study, please go to this page.

If you are a student, and would like a little support in any area, just click on the triangle below. This will open a new page with all the relevant workshops held across the University. Most of these will be available to ANY student, but you need to contact the Centre to check first.

Each area of this triangle stands for a Generic Graduate Attribute. You can read more about the attributes here. Basically, the attributes are what our Uni hopes you come out of your degree being able to do, or what kind of person you will become. The Foundation skills just help you get there.


If you are wondering what workshops or courses are offered in your specific area just use these options to select the area you are searching for:

Faculty Approaches: A range of foundation and orientation strategies from Faculties might include:

1. modules
2. workshops
3. academic orientation units
4. including students in SWOT programs


To search: Use the search boxes above for a detailed search. This takes you to a new page with your results. For a simple search, click on the attribute you want in the triangle below. This brings up a list of all case studies for that attribute. In both cases, click on the name of the case study to view the whole document.


Centres often offer the Foundation skills workshops across the Uni. Here are links to each of the Centres. Each one provides students with a different service.

Learning Centre

The Learning Centre assists students to develop the generic skills that are necessary for learning and communicating knowledge and ideas at university.
Courses: http://www.usyd.edu.au/stuserv/academic_support/learning_centre/course.shtml

Mathematics Learning Centre

The centre has several different types of courses available. Details and timetables are on their website. Pre semester courses are designed for students to attend before their regular classes start. These include the Statistics bridging course (for psychology or public health students), and the Maths bridging course (for HSC maths or Mathematics Extension 1). These courses incur a small fee.

Courses are also on throughout the academic year. These include adhoc workshops and lectures which students or faculties can request to be run, for example tutorials or a short lecture course. The centre always has a drop in service available for ad hoc help. Most of the students using the centre are sourced by outreach. This means the centre targets at risk and new students, for example through posters at enrolment sites, by targeting enrolment data of students who did not do HSC maths, and by attending first year lectures/tutorials. They are also involved in the first year foundation program.

The Koori Centre

The Koori Centre provides programs, services and facilities to encourage and support the involvement of Indigenous Australians in all aspects of tertiary education at the University of Sydney. The majority of Indigenous Australian students, who are new to university study, find the experience very exciting but sometimes overwhelming. Many of our students enrol in courses with an Aboriginal perspective to feel a sense of familiarity and belonging. The Koori Centre recognises this and especially welcomes and encourages Indigenous Australian students to enrol in our block-mode and mainstream courses. The Centre provides tutorial assistance, access to computers, an Indigenous Research Library, study space, an orientation program at the beginning of the year and assistance in study and learning skills.
Courses: http://www.koori.usyd.edu.au/studentsupport/academicskills.shtml

Library

The University of Sydney Library is a network of 19 libraries across 9 campuses.
Information about library services, as well as access to electronic services are available from this site.
Courses: http://library.usyd.edu.au/skills/

Careers Centre

The University's Careers Centre has embarked on a project to bring its services directly to interested Faculties with the intention of forming "service level agreements” based on a series of modules aimed at raising student awareness of the generic graduate attributes they have developed during their university experience and translating these into employability outcomes: Lifelong Career Management Skills.

Click here to view modules and contact details: http://www.careers.usyd.edu.au/faculty/faculty.shtml

The Careers Centre sees itself in a unique position to assist faculties in meeting their GGA needs. It maintains strong industry links with the major graduate recruiters and employs staff with high level professional expertise in this field.

For more detail, please click here.

The SWOT website

features general undergraduate orientation programs. http://www.swot.usyd.edu.au/

 

Faculty Foundation Initiatives

Agriculture

Ms Lynn Henry oversees the First Year Experience in the Faculty, and Pam Brass is the Faculty Manager. Please contact them for specific details for this year.

Kathryn Bartimote has previously coordinated a Maths Improvement Program in Semester 1 for students lacking assumed maths. This was in conjunction with the Maths Learning Centre and also involved students from Vet Science.

For further details regarding this faculty, please see their website http://www.agric.usyd.edu.au/current/

Veterinary Science

Paul Sheehy is involved with the First Year Experience Plan that is on the ITL website. It is quite comprehensive. The faculty teaches WebCT introductory skills within units of study.

For further information on orientation support available in the Faculty, please see the handbook/materials for Professional Practice 1A.

For further details regarding this faculty, please see their website http://www.vetsci.usyd.edu.au/current_students/

Economics and Business

For general information, the website is http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/content.php?pageid=2317

Semester 1:

  • UG orientation day: presentations from Assoc. Dean and various Faculty support staff, Library staff, and Faculty Blackboard intranet; followed by meet academic staff and meet mentors or sign up for Peer Mentoring Scheme.
  • PG orientation day: presentations from Assoc. Dean and various Faculty support staff, Library staff, and Faculty Blackboard intranet; followed by meet academic staff and meet mentors or sign up for Peer Mentoring Scheme.
  • Transition lectures. (O Week or Wk 1) 4 x 1 hour lectures on: groupwork, essay writing, oral presentations, habits of successful students. (no limit on attendance)
  • Skills workshops: (Wk 2 or 3) on critical reading, essay writing, analysing essay questions, developing an argument, quoting & paraphrasing, etc. run by Learning Centre, but sponsored by this Faculty specifically for E & B students. (Must register for these no more than 25 per workshop)
  • Maths workshops: Wk 3; sponsored by this Faculty, run by Maths Learning Centre. 4 x 90 min. workshops on calculus, sigma notation, working with graphs, et al. (Must register - no more than 50 per workshop)
  • Peer Mentoring Scheme: assists transition to University for UG & PG students. http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/mentoring/
    • 4 wk program for new UGs operating in groups of about five with a more senior UG student as mentor.
    • 6 wk program for new PGs. More senior PG student mentors lead small discipline based groups of about five
  • MASUS (Measure of Academic Skills for University Students) diagnostic tests. These tests are run in 2 large UG Units of Study: Accounting 1A and Commercial Law 1A. The test results inform the student of any weaknesses in his/her academic literacy. Follow up workshops are offered in essay writing for students diagnosed as having unsatisfactory academic literacy according to MASUS criteria.

NB: Transition lectures and skills workshops are promoted at Orientation, on Faculty website (well, once we get them back up there), by providing a flyer in enrolment packs. The Maths workshops are sometimes promoted at orientation (register on that day), and this semester, through Blackboard intranet and through lecturers in targeted Units of Study.

Semester 2: (details as above)

Other support:

  • The Economics & Business librarians in Fisher Library offer classes specifically for E & B students (on database searching, etc.) and a schedule of what's on offer can be found at: http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/skills/skillsec.html Ms Fiona McCay, 13560, who is head of the Library's unit that assists this Faculty, can provide more information.
  • PASS scheme: We are trailing a new scheme to assist students in their studies this semester, called Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) - however, I'm not sure if this qualifies as an induction/ transition/ orientation scheme, because I believe it will continue throughout the semester, and is targeted at 2nd year, as well as 1st year students. Kellie Morrison (k.morrison@econ.usyd.edu.au 90367090) has more information. http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/content.php?pageid=14824
  • There is a Student Induction Manual for Undergraduates that is given to students when they enrol. (being revised in the next few months)
  • We are currently setting up a teaching & learning website with links to resources, which we hope will help students access literacy & numeracy resources more quickly. There is a maths numeracy quiz that students can do to ascertain their maths ability in terms of the skills needed for their Units of Study. The quiz site contains many links to useful online maths resources. You can find the quizzes at: http://quiz.econ.usyd.edu.au/mathquiz/
  • We have contributed to Learning Centre online projects e.g. Annotated Links (links to useful writing websites for university students) and Clearer Writing.
  • We also have a video conferencing orientation for students offshore. Ada Chow, our International Development Manager, (9351 5283) has more info on this.