Studying

You have chosen to enrol in one of the better universities in the country, and that means we trust you are able to work and organise your time independently and identify and fix gaps in your own knowledge without a parent or teacher holding your hand.

However, if you have a registered disability, then extra support may be available to you through disability services.

Students can, and do, fail units on this degree - a small number of students are required to withdraw at the end of Year 1 each year because they have failed too many units, and some students are required to repeat Year 1. This page aims to give you the best possible set-up so that you pass this unit on the first attempt.

The most important principle is that university is not school - it works a very different way, and the more and quicker you adapt to the different way things work here, the better.

Prerequisites

We require an A* grade in mathematics at A-levels, or an equivalent qualification, to join the Computer Science degree. If you do not have A-levels, then it is your responsibility to teach yourself missing topics with the help of books in the library or online resources - there are free videos online on every part of A-level mathematics.

Communication and Scalability

We are expecting over 200 students on this unit. This has some consequences for how we work together to keep everything running smoothly:

• Your place for support will be the scheduled workshops. You must not expect immediate help at any other time. During the workshops, there will be teaching assistants available to help you as well as the academic(s) teaching the unit.
• Questions outside the scheduled hours must go on the Microsoft Teams forum. We will answer them as soon as resonably possible during working hours. (You may post a question on Teams at 11pm on a weekend if you want to, but you will not get an answer until 9am next Monday at the earliest.)
• You must not e-mail, phone, or private message the lecturer individually with questions about the material: this does not scale, and is unfair to other students. Instead, you should ask in the next workshop, or ask on Microsoft Teams.
• Teaching assistants are students from higher years who are paid by the hour. Outside the workshops, they are not being paid for this unit, so you must not ask for private help from the teaching assistants outside of the workshop hours.
• You will not get extra private lessons from the lecturer or the teaching assistants, please do not ask for this.
• There are no office hours or similar for this unit in 2024-25, as this does not scale to the current class sizes. The place to get support is the workshops, and you should make the most of these, and the teaching assistants available there.

Study Guide

Here is a rough guide to time planning for a newly starting student.

In each teaching block of Year 1, you will take 3 units all worth an equal amount (20 credits each). While you will all have some units you find easier or harder, as a rough average:

• Expect to treat your degree like a job where you turn up and work regular hours every week; if your plan is “maybe do some work shortly before the exams” then based on past years’ data you are very likely to end up being required to withdraw.
• Assuming you work 42 hours a week during term time - which is not too far off the average in Europe - then that gives 14 hours/week on average for each of your three units.
• Maths A has 2h/week lectures and 4h/week workshops, for a total of 6h/week. Therefore, that leaves 8h/week individual study time for you on Maths A, that is 4h per session. Note that the individual study time is higher than the contact hours: this is by design.

See the page on sessions for advice on how to structure your time for each individual session.