The Official UTS Subject Reviews Thread (Table of Contents on First Post) (1 Viewer)

[Ethicks]

Statistical Design and Analysis
Subject Number: 33116
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn 2015
Ease: 8/10 - Pretty straight forward subject, keep up with the lectures and tutorials and you will be fine. The biggest tip I was given by the lecturer was to think of it as analysis more so than the mathematical side of things. This advice was very helpful going into the final exam - Do all past exam papers and know each question inside and out and you will do very well in this subject.
Lecturer: 8/10 - Good lecturer, old school methods but very approachable and helpful if you need to reach out.
Interest: 6/10
Overall: 6/10

Principle of Scientific Practice
Subject Number: 60001
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn 2015
Ease: 10/10 - Extremely easy and quite boring majority of this will be common sense to your average Joe Blow. You don't need to attend lecturers just do all the assessments and you'll easily get a Distinction or more. There are a lot of little assessments throughout the semester, one major being a group report based on an experiment be sure to get in with a good group. The best part of this subject was the fact that there was no final exam (yay)
Lecturer: N/A - Didn't attend enough to have a valid opinion
Interest: 2/10
Overall: 3/10

Chemistry 1
Subject Number: 65111
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn 2015
Ease: 7/10 - Pretty easy, a lot easier for those who have just come from HSC Chemistry - Do the past exam papers and you will do fine in the final exam.
Lecturer: 10/10 - Great at explaining the content, quite humourous.
Interest: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

Cell Biology and Genetics
Subject Number: 91161
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn 2015
Ease: 9/10 - A lot of content, quite a few different lecturers with one who was very inexperienced at giving lectures with many awkward moments. The subject is very poorly organised. Labs were very jam packed. Final exam is all multiple choice so quite easy the online quizzes majority of the answers can be found with a simple google search.
Interest: 8/10
Overall: 7/10

 

[Lunchables]

Subject Name: Integrating Business Perspectives
Subject Number: 26100
Faculty: Faculty of Business
Semester: Autumn
Ease: 8/10
Its not difficult to grasp the concepts as it is essentially things you encounter everyday (social, political issues ect.). Didnt study much and I was fine. The most challenging part may be the group assignment, luckily I had a good group. My advice is plan and organise early on. Essays are straightforward.
Lecturer: Stephen Schweinsberg - I want to go bed
Tutor: Tayyab Amjed - Enthusiastic and helpful.
Subject Coordinator: ?
Interest: 6.5/10
Interesting concepts introducing you to problems within society but still boring.
Overall: 7/10
Simple enough. Be aware you have to present in front of your tut class.

Subject Name: Accounting for Business Decisions A
Subject Number: 22107
Faculty: Faculty of Business
Semester: Autumn
Ease:6.5/10
You will be doing a lot of journal entries and budgets. Studying hard would be a good idea. Make sure you do the screencast for easy bonus marks, trust me. Also the 10% homework option (where your homework is collected and marked 3 times at random) is more bonus marks.
Lecturer: John Tyler and James Wakefield.- Be prepared for Tyler's stand up routines if you like that sort of thing. Though he is very knowledgeable. James is also very smart and clear but
Tutor: Rachel Wright - Very good teacher.
Subject Coordinator: James Wakefield
Interest: 7/10
The subject introduces you to the world of accounting so if you're interested in this field you will at least respect the subject.
Overall: 7/10
Probably your first big university subject. Over half the grade fails the mid-sem for some reason, though It really isn't difficult. They will end up saying if you pass the final you will pass the subject, so I guess just make sure you're ready for that. Hint: Make friends and find past papers for the final as this will help big time. Thank me later.

Subject Name: Fundamentals of Business Finance
Subject Number: 25300
Faculty: Faculty of Business
Semester: Autumn
Ease: 6.5/10
Formulas, and formulas. Learn to understand them and you'll be alright. Also make sure you understand definitions like 'bond' and 'valuation'. In regards to the subject's math, HSC general mathematics is harder so don't worry.
Lecturer: Forgot, a Dutch gentleman I think. - very good.
Tutor: Muhammad (forgot surname) - Couldn't understand old mate so Tuts weren't the most helpful thing.
Subject Coordinator: ?
Interest: 6/10
Least favourite subject
Overall: Study + Understand formula = success.

Subject Name: Economics for Business
Subject Number: 23115
Faculty: Faculty of Business
Semester: Autumn
Ease: 8.5/10
Easy as pie if you did HSC economics. If you didn't you may have to do a little bit more study but I don't think it is too difficult. We had quizzes with one week to complete each. Everyone got the same quiz so you could easily help each other and get 85+.
Lecturer: Jingjing Zhang and another gentleman - Stopped going to JJ's lectures. Technical difficulties + not understanding a word = wtf am I doing here? The Chinese gentleman however was very good but didn't go to his lecs either.
Tutor: Mario and Jivnaz - Mario was very knowledgeable but be prepared to answer questions I prefered Jivnaz. He was overall more comfortable and easier to work with.
Subject Coordinator: ?
Interest: 8/10
I like economics so it was cool.
Overall: Easy enough to grasp micro and macro economics topics.

 

[BlueGas]

Is the first post gonna be edited with all the new reviews?

 

[Katsumi]

Is the first post gonna be edited with all the new reviews?

I can do this when i have time

 

[astroman]

Semester is about to wrap up so I'll post some:

*

Subject Name: Programming Fundamentals
Subject Number: 48023
Faculty: Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Spring
Ease: 7/10
Lecturer: Raymond Lister, this guy is knowledgable but he is very lazy and didn't show up the whole semester because he took personal leave. Instead, all lectures were online which were recordings of last semesters course. Tutors will give handouts in lectures so its still worthwhile to go if you want free copies of the lab solutions and don't want to waste your time printing.
Tutor: Al / Ryan, the tutors play little input in this course, their purpose is just to watch students doing lab tests and check for cheating. They will usually teach some stuff for the first few weeks but they stop after a few weeks since most students leave after doing lab tests. You are free to change you lab class so your tutor will be changing frequently. They are pretty useless though since I saw personally quite a few students cheating in the labs.
Subject Coordinator: ?
Interest: 1/10 I learnt very little in this course but I expected it to be engaging, it is 99% rote learning and then vomiting out that rote in your lab tests, although the lab tests go from easy to difficult, they are all relatively easy to rote learn unless you have the mind of a goldfish. People with previous Java programming skill will find them a breeze but people without will have to commit to rote learning the solution. Also, there is no group work so if you like working yourself it's good.
Overall: 2/10 Easy course to pass but very difficult to get high distinction, there is a single assignment which is very complicated and allegedly so is the final exam, get this over and done with quickly. You cannot get marks for assignments or the final exam unless you have passed the pass/fail mastery tests.

*


Subject Name: Web Systems
Subject Number: 31268
Faculty: Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Spring
Ease: 8/10
Lecturer: Chris Wong, Chris is very popular around UTS and teaches quite a few IT subjects, he is knowledgable but has a hard time getting stuff into people's heads. Lectures only ran a few times throughout this course since they aren't really required.
Tutor: Andrew, if you get this guy, you will be thankful. He is very smart and has done the course just two years ago. Very helpful and stays back to help out.
Subject Coordinator: ?
Interest: 6/10 The course is mainly teaching Linux and HTML/CSS through LinuxGym and the assignment where you had to make a simple website using HTML/CSS. Most can be learned through YouTube videos and online tutorials so I found this subject quite a waste of money TBH. The assignment is quite fun but the skills tests and exams are quite challenging if you're not prepared.
Overall: 7/10 quite a useful subject if you are going to be doing any kind of IT related subjects in the future. Essentially you are taught the fundamentals of web development and using Linux.

*

Subject Name: Introduction to Information Systems
Subject Number: 31266
Faculty: Faculty of Engineering IT (FEIT)
Semester: Spring
Ease: 10/10 you can sleep throughout the classes and still get a high distinction, there are three assignments, two of which are group and one which isn't. If you have done any kind of HSC humanities/business subjects such as Economic, Business Studies, Legal etc. you will find this subject very easy since it is just essay writing and one presentation.
Lecturer: No lectures.
Tutor: Rory / Shaun
Subject Coordinator: Shaun
Interest: 4/10 This subject is similar to HSC IPT, if you enjoyed HSC IPT you might enjoy this but it's mostly repeating stuff you already know. You will have to watch presentations for 10 weeks straight and the rest of the class/tutorial is just group discussion. If you hate group discussions you will loathe this subject, I'd advise you still go regardless, just sit on your laptop and do something else.
Overall: 5/10 A very easy subject and compulsory to do so may as well get it out of the way.

 

[brent012]

Subject Name: Programming Fundamentals
Tutor: Al / Ryan, the tutors play little input in this course
Overall: 2/10 Easy course to pass but very difficult to get high distinction

Really? When I did it Ryan set up all the tutorials and assessments - so that's quite a lot of input.

Also, it was a fairly easy HD but the people struggling had a real risk of failing since the final was must pass. It's changed a lot apparently, but i'd heard it was made easier (which I'm not sure is possible).

 

[astroman]

Really? When I did it Ryan set up all the tutorials and assessments - so that's quite a lot of input.

Also, it was a fairly easy HD but the people struggling had a real risk of failing since the final was must pass. It's changed a lot apparently, but i'd heard it was made easier (which I'm not sure is possible).

Now, all lab tests you do on PLATE are the same for all semesters and have been set up by Raymond. Passing the pass/fail mastery tests on PLATE guarantees you a pass of 50%, you can then get additional marks by doing the optional lab tests/assignment/final exam. Mind you, the assignment info is just 30 pages alone and batshit confusing as heck, whoever wrote it out needs to be fired. Now the final isn't compulsory, but your correct in saying the subject is easier, you can memorise the lab tests beforehand and then just do them pretty quickly, you don't need to learn anything.

 

[Katsumi]

Hi All

I'll be taking charge of updating this thread from now on. Feel free to post your subject reviews with the added incentive of them making the front page (And maybe some rep thrown your way)

 

[Rhinoz8142]

Now, all lab tests you do on PLATE are the same for all semesters and have been set up by Raymond. Passing the pass/fail mastery tests on PLATE guarantees you a pass of 50%, you can then get additional marks by doing the optional lab tests/assignment/final exam. Mind you, the assignment info is just 30 pages alone and batshit confusing as heck, whoever wrote it out needs to be fired. Now the final isn't compulsory, but your correct in saying the subject is easier, you can memorise the lab tests beforehand and then just do them pretty quickly, you don't need to learn anything.

He changes it constantly,

When I was doing it, he made the final compulsory and you need a double pass to pass the subject, before in 2015S1 he only made the PLATE test mandatory to pass the subject and if you attempt the assignment that marks will be added to the final score.

But then in 2016S1, you will only get PASS(50) if you attempt the lab test, in order for you to get the marks from the assignment you need to pass the final exam.

He constantly changes it..smh..

 

[Clara_Oswald]

Here's my $0.02.
Degree: Bachelor of Science in Games Development.
These are also all core subjects for BScIT students though:

Subject Name: Communication for IT Professionals
Subject Number: 31265
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 7/10 - Written components of course were easy, presentations killed me.
Lecturer: Christy Jie Liang: No rating; We only had an introductory lecture in the first week, after that it was just 3 hour workshops each week.
Tutor: Scott Simon 8/10; He was really enthusiastic and quite good at explaining things and gave good feedback. Shame it was for such a useless subject. I would have liked him for something that would actually help me with my degree.
Subject Coordinator: Christy Jie Liang
Interest: 3/10; The moment I saw this subject I thought it would be hell. It was heavily focused on presentations and I don't like presenting so :3 We also had to write reports and literature reviews which were what I looked forward to the most, hence the 3 and not a 1 or 0/10 lol.
Overall: 3/10; 3 hour long workshops killed everyone. We basically learnt skills that you should've learnt at school mainly writing and presenting. They taught us how to write reports and literature reivews including how to analyse texts, synthesise information and write cohesive arguments. They also went through effective presentation techniques. We had a major group assignment where we had to find and interview an IT professional, put together a vodcast and present a slideshow about the IT professional. We also had two writing tasks - a lit review and report, participation marks, and no final exam. Interviewing a professional was quite interesting and opened us up to what our futures could be like, and I enjoyed the writing assignments but everything else (including 3 hours of learning stuff I already knew) was shit.



Subject Name: Programming Fundamentals
Subject Number: 48023
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 9/10
Lecturer: Raymond Lister: 4/10; We only had 6 lectures in total (first 6 weeks). Didn't learn too much in these face to face lectures, a lot of it was him making mistakes in his typing -.- We had to watch a lot of Youtube videos that were recordings from a previous semester, but they weren't incredibly helpful either and were quite rambly and confusing.
Tutor: not sure of the name: 2/10; She didn't teach us anything - I don't think any tutors for this subject do. She just kept talking throughout our mastery tests reminding students to put their phones away and have no paper on the desk "because it is cheating and we will have to report you" "hey students remember to log into progFunGym, not GNOME" "hey students if you finish in 15 minutes you get a chocolate" like it was actually really irritating.
Subject Coordinator: Raymond Lister.
Interest: 7/10 (initially), afterwards ~1-2/10; I didn't learn anything in this course. It was easy to memorise the programs and regurgitate them in the mastery tests (as they had to be fairly similar/the same as the sample solutions for PLATE to work). It was mainly filling in the blanks in pre-written programs and only in the optional assignment at the end did you have to write your entire program from scratch (but the few people I know who attempted the assignment struggled with the concepts and didn't actually understand how to write the programs from scratch).
Overall: 2/10 Easy marks but kind of pointless. Didn't effectively teach the fundamentals of java programming imo. Easily got a HD but I still don't get the concepts properly, the HD is probaly only dueto the fact that I have programmed before but in a different language so I found it easier than people who had never programmed before. Honestly the face to face lectures were a waste of time. Didn't even get feedback for my assignment as I don't think Raymond bothered to human mark them (only a handful of the cohort bothered with it and he was still too lazy to check them)



Subject Name: Web Systems
Subject Number: 31268
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 6/10
Lecturer: Chris Wong: 8/10; He was a really enthusiastic guy and you could tell that he really loves what he does. We only had about 5 or 6 seminars in total so that was a shame. The rest of the content was taught to us through Youtube videos (surprise, surprise -.-). He could explain concepts relatively well, although there were some areas that I feel like we didn't go into enough detail on, or he explained them in a bit of a confusing way.
Tutor: Don't know the name: 2/10; Never really explained anything to us and when asking for help sometimes they wouldn't know what our problem was or how to solve it. The assistant tutor helper person knew more than the actual tutor. We had to go through this online training program called LinuxGym at our own pace.
Subject Coordinator: Chris Wong 8/10;
Interest: 7/10; I liked the idea of learning about how computers worked, learning linux and CSS/HTML.
Overall: 7/10; This was the only course I did this semester that I was actually happy with, it was both useful and challenging. The content was interesting and relevant and learning Linux is quite a useful skill to have. The main assignment was for us to design a website using HTML and CSS. Other assessments include a short group presentation on a topic of our choice, LinuxGym chapters to be submitted each week, a practical skills test (this was actually quite hard and many people I knew failed), and a final exam which was entirely multiple chioce.



Subject Name: Introduction to Information Systems
Subject Number: 31266
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 10/10; EASY marks. 1 easy assignment where we just had to answer a bunch of short answer questions, a group presentation and report on a given topic, 6 low stakes quizzes (which they literally provide answers to on UTS online beforehand), 1 final exam where they gave us sample questions and answers on UTS online and as it turns out they were exactly the same as the actual exam questions. [NOT SURE IF IT IS ALWAYS LIKE THIS]
Lecturer: Shadi Erfani + Others 2/10 (based on the 3 or 4 lectures I actually went to); They just read off the slides which were copied from the textbook so I stopped going but I heard from people who went to lectures later in the semester that the lectures were still boring and rather useless.
Tutor: Hamed(?): 3/10; He didn't actually teach us anything. We had tutorial questions that he made us answer as groups and then each group read their answers out to the class. Then the tutor would just put up sample answers on the projector for everyone to take photos of. That is literally my 1.5 hour weekly tutorial in a nutshell.
Subject Coordinator: Shadi Erfani
Interest: 1/10; It's business oriented and I'm not interested in that sort of thing at all. I never took any businessy subjects at school and don't intend on doing any more in the future unless absolutely necessary. The content was sort of useful though, as you do gain an understanding of how businesses work and how to integrate IT, but honestly it was pretty boring.
Overall: 4/10; Boring subject but easy marks. Useful if you don't have any background in business as the textbook explains different concepts on information systems and businesses but apart from that it's pretty bland. Unfortunately it's mandatory lol.

 

[Katsumi]

Here's my $0.02.
Degree: Bachelor of Science in Games Development.
These are also all core subjects for BScIT students though:

Subject Name: Communication for IT Professionals
Subject Number: 31265
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 7/10 - Written components of course were easy, presentations killed me.
Lecturer: Christy Jie Liang: No rating; We only had an introductory lecture in the first week, after that it was just 3 hour workshops each week.
Tutor: Scott Simon 8/10; He was really enthusiastic and quite good at explaining things and gave good feedback. Shame it was for such a useless subject. I would have liked him for something that would actually help me with my degree.
Subject Coordinator: Christy Jie Liang
Interest: 3/10; The moment I saw this subject I thought it would be hell. It was heavily focused on presentations and I don't like presenting so :3 We also had to write reports and literature reviews which were what I looked forward to the most, hence the 3 and not a 1 or 0/10 lol.
Overall: 3/10; 3 hour long workshops killed everyone. We basically learnt skills that you should've learnt at school mainly writing and presenting. They taught us how to write reports and literature reivews including how to analyse texts, synthesise information and write cohesive arguments. They also went through effective presentation techniques. We had a major group assignment where we had to find and interview an IT professional, put together a vodcast and present a slideshow about the IT professional. We also had two writing tasks - a lit review and report, participation marks, and no final exam. Interviewing a professional was quite interesting and opened us up to what our futures could be like, and I enjoyed the writing assignments but everything else (including 3 hours of learning stuff I already knew) was shit.



Subject Name: Programming Fundamentals
Subject Number: 48023
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 9/10
Lecturer: Raymond Lister: 4/10; We only had 6 lectures in total (first 6 weeks). Didn't learn too much in these face to face lectures, a lot of it was him making mistakes in his typing -.- We had to watch a lot of Youtube videos that were recordings from a previous semester, but they weren't incredibly helpful either and were quite rambly and confusing.
Tutor: not sure of the name: 2/10; She didn't teach us anything - I don't think any tutors for this subject do. She just kept talking throughout our mastery tests reminding students to put their phones away and have no paper on the desk "because it is cheating and we will have to report you" "hey students remember to log into progFunGym, not GNOME" "hey students if you finish in 15 minutes you get a chocolate" like it was actually really irritating.
Subject Coordinator: Raymond Lister.
Interest: 7/10 (initially), afterwards ~1-2/10; I didn't learn anything in this course. It was easy to memorise the programs and regurgitate them in the mastery tests (as they had to be fairly similar/the same as the sample solutions for PLATE to work). It was mainly filling in the blanks in pre-written programs and only in the optional assignment at the end did you have to write your entire program from scratch (but the few people I know who attempted the assignment struggled with the concepts and didn't actually understand how to write the programs from scratch).
Overall: 2/10 Easy marks but kind of pointless. Didn't effectively teach the fundamentals of java programming imo. Easily got a HD but I still don't get the concepts properly, the HD is probaly only dueto the fact that I have programmed before but in a different language so I found it easier than people who had never programmed before. Honestly the face to face lectures were a waste of time. Didn't even get feedback for my assignment as I don't think Raymond bothered to human mark them (only a handful of the cohort bothered with it and he was still too lazy to check them)



Subject Name: Web Systems
Subject Number: 31268
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 6/10
Lecturer: Chris Wong: 8/10; He was a really enthusiastic guy and you could tell that he really loves what he does. We only had about 5 or 6 seminars in total so that was a shame. The rest of the content was taught to us through Youtube videos (surprise, surprise -.-). He could explain concepts relatively well, although there were some areas that I feel like we didn't go into enough detail on, or he explained them in a bit of a confusing way.
Tutor: Don't know the name: 2/10; Never really explained anything to us and when asking for help sometimes they wouldn't know what our problem was or how to solve it. The assistant tutor helper person knew more than the actual tutor. We had to go through this online training program called LinuxGym at our own pace.
Subject Coordinator: Chris Wong 8/10;
Interest: 7/10; I liked the idea of learning about how computers worked, learning linux and CSS/HTML.
Overall: 7/10; This was the only course I did this semester that I was actually happy with, it was both useful and challenging. The content was interesting and relevant and learning Linux is quite a useful skill to have. The main assignment was for us to design a website using HTML and CSS. Other assessments include a short group presentation on a topic of our choice, LinuxGym chapters to be submitted each week, a practical skills test (this was actually quite hard and many people I knew failed), and a final exam which was entirely multiple chioce.



Subject Name: Introduction to Information Systems
Subject Number: 31266
Faculty: Engineering and IT (FEIT)
Semester: Autumn, 2017
Ease: 10/10; EASY marks. 1 easy assignment where we just had to answer a bunch of short answer questions, a group presentation and report on a given topic, 6 low stakes quizzes (which they literally provide answers to on UTS online beforehand), 1 final exam where they gave us sample questions and answers on UTS online and as it turns out they were exactly the same as the actual exam questions. [NOT SURE IF IT IS ALWAYS LIKE THIS]
Lecturer: Shadi Erfani + Others 2/10 (based on the 3 or 4 lectures I actually went to); They just read off the slides which were copied from the textbook so I stopped going but I heard from people who went to lectures later in the semester that the lectures were still boring and rather useless.
Tutor: Hamed(?): 3/10; He didn't actually teach us anything. We had tutorial questions that he made us answer as groups and then each group read their answers out to the class. Then the tutor would just put up sample answers on the projector for everyone to take photos of. That is literally my 1.5 hour weekly tutorial in a nutshell.
Subject Coordinator: Shadi Erfani
Interest: 1/10; It's business oriented and I'm not interested in that sort of thing at all. I never took any businessy subjects at school and don't intend on doing any more in the future unless absolutely necessary. The content was sort of useful though, as you do gain an understanding of how businesses work and how to integrate IT, but honestly it was pretty boring.
Overall: 4/10; Boring subject but easy marks. Useful if you don't have any background in business as the textbook explains different concepts on information systems and businesses but apart from that it's pretty bland. Unfortunately it's mandatory lol.

Thanks for the contribution - i have updated the thread and enjoy a bit of extra rep

My question to everyone: would you like these reviews dated so that you can gauge their relevancy with a single glance at the thread? If the demand is there it's something that i am very willing to spend some time on.

 

[the_matrix]

Degree: Bachelor of Science in IT


Subject Name: Programming Fundamentals
Subject Number: 48023
Faculty: FEIT
Semester: Spring 2017
Ease: 8/10
Lecturer: 6/10 Raymond Lister - he's a pretty lazy lecturer, some of the concepts he explains well, other concepts not so well
Tutor: 7/10 Al - your average tutor basically
Subject Coordinator: Raymond Lister
Interest: 6/10 - it's an introduction to Java course and could've been more interesting if someone other than Raymond was teaching it. The structure and topics of this course are actually pretty good for an introductory programming course as it starts off easy and progressively becomes more difficult later on, as opposed to my previous introductory programming experience at another university which started off difficult and confused many students.
Overall: 7/10 - easy to pass as you basically just memorise bits of code and regurgitate it in the weekly mastery tests, not so easy to get D or HD as you actually need to understand the Java concepts for the assignment. If you're serious about learning Java and want to do 48024 Applications Programming (the continuing Java course) I suggest you look up Java Tutorial for Complete Beginners by John Purcell on Udemy/YouTube as this guy explains the concepts (Java syntax and OOP concepts) much much better than Raymond.

I'm not going to review the other core semester 1 IT subjects as there are enough reviews already and these subjects haven't really changed. Web Systems is actually the most interesting and technical of them and you will learn a lot of things if you pay attention and put effort into it, and the introduction to Linux here is taught so much better than my previous university, so make the most of this course!


Subject Name: Networking Essentials
Subject Number: 31270
Faculty: FEIT
Semester: Autumn 2018
Ease: 3/10
Lecturer: There are no lectures, just a 3hr lab per week with tutor - make sure you go to them so that you know how to configure a basic network as well as get vital hints from your tutor
Tutor: 9/10 Meriam - very knowledgable tutor and helps us out wherever she can with the content, very approachable and will respond to all your emails even if you send like 3 in a week (because the content of this course is very difficult).
Subject Coordinator: 8/10 Yang Yang - had him once when my tutor was absent, very knowledgeable and passionate about the content and always gives us reminders and sometimes hints via email before an assessment task
Interest: 5/10 - the content can be quite interesting (especially for the Case Study) at times but it is a very difficult course with overwhelming amounts of content and a high failure rate
Overall: 4/10 - I almost had to drop another course because of the demands of this course. Unless you're majoring in networking, I highly recommend you take 41092 Network Fundamentals instead - it isn't an easy course but you have a higher chance in passing in 41092 than in this and you also have less assessment tasks and you're surrounded by hard working Engineering students so when it comes to group work you won't have to carry the whole team like I did (I did 60% of the Case Study which took me around 35 hours). This is the hardest and most demanding subject I've ever done at UTS - you won't have time for reading all the NetAcad content so make sure you make notes based on the weekly focus questions they post on UTSOnline, that is the only way to pass this subject without going insane. Make sure you can subnet because that is tested a heap in this subject and do not do anything last minute (including study notes) otherwise you risk failing. There is a sh*t tonne of assessments in this subject (3 quizzes, 1 VLSM subnet task, 1 case study report, troubleshoot task, final online exam, skills based task, final written exam) - most of them are not easy to get high marks in, and in the last 3 weeks of the semester you literally have 1 assessment every week so have fun with studying and try to get 50% in all assessments! If you feel this subject isn't as bad as it already sounds, well fyi for the Student Feedback Survey it had a response rate of >50% so there ya go! First 6 weeks are chaotic then once you start to understand whats going on the course becomes quite interesting but that doesn't mean things become easier


Subject Name: Business Requirements Modelling
Subject Number: 31269
Faculty: FEIT
Semester: Autumn 2018
Ease: 8/10
Lecturer: 6/10 Dr Asif Gill - you can tell he's an industry expert in Business Analysis but I can tell you this doesn't mean much when it comes to teaching quality. He just brain dumps everything he knows into the lecture slides, meaning that each lecture is like 35-50 slides. I only came to the first lecture and the last lecture where he gives hints for the exam.
Tutor: 7/10 Rania - also another industry expert except she explains the contents much better and has useful hints for us when it comes to drawing the diagrams
Subject Coordinator: 6/10 Dr Asif Gill
Interest: 2/10 - very boring subject much like Introduction to Information Systems, you're forced to come to every tutorial because of the weekly quizzes which add up to make 24% of your final mark - but many people just came to do the quiz and left and this made the tutor angry but yolo! making notes for this subject is so tedious and time consuming because Dr Gill just brain dumps everything into the lecture slides
Overall: 5/10 - easy subject, but very boring and can be time consuming


Subject Name: Collaborative Business Processes
Subject Number: 31247
Faculty: FEIT
Semester: Autumn 2018
Ease: 7/10
Lecturer: 5/10 Sojen - his lecture slides are not very good, they cover what you need for assignments but in very basic detail. He was in the 2010 Sensodyne Ad at 0:04
Tutor: 5/10 Marcin - combined lecture-tutorial sessions 3hrs each week, tutor talks when Sojen doesn't basically so he's essentially the second lecturer.
Subject Coordinator: Sojen
Interest: 4/10 - the good thing about this subject is it gives you a break from IT because all 3 assignments focus on sustainable development so I got to talk about nuclear cars! other than that it's slightly better than BRM but still quite boring so half the class goes missing after assignment 1 and that made Sojen very angry hahaha.
Overall: 6/10 - the lecture slides are very basic in detail and you actually need to rely on some of the slides in order to draw the diagrams in your assignments, and the assignment criteria is ambiguous and the marking is very subjective even though you argue with them telling them how ambiguous the assignment criteria is. The assignment feedback is not helpful because I guarantee you it comes from a bank of feedbacks so the feedback is directly targeted at your mistakes in the assignment.


Subject Name: Fundamentals of C Programming
Subject Number: 48430
Faculty: FEIT
Semester: Autumn 2018
Ease: 6.5/10
Lecturer: 9/10 Beeshanga
Tutor: 7/10 Shubhekshya Basnet
Subject Coordinator: 9/10 Beeshanga
Interest: 9/10 - C is considered the backbone os most programming languages and many people recommend this as your first programming language. It teaches you to think at an extremely basic level that other languages don't. Add these benefits up with the great teaching staff and contents of this course, and you will love this course. The only annoying thing were the weekly quizzes which too so much time and most of us gave up on reading the textbook and instead just redid the quiz like literally 15-20 times until we got 10/10 for them.
Overall: 8.5/10 - this is actually an Electrical Engineering subject that I took as an elective. If you're into programming I highly recommend you take this course, especially as C is considered the backbone of most programming languages! Having taken the same subject at UNSW (COMP1511) I can guarantee you that the teaching quality and lecture content is so so so much better here than it is at UNSW - just make sure you put effort into it. If you love C that much I think the continuing subject is Embedded Systems.

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@Moderator:
1. I think having the reviews dated would be a great idea!
2. Some faculties have merged together and renamed so can you update them on page 1 please (bold = new faculty name):
Faculty of International Studies, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences: = Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology = Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT)
Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health = Faculty of Health

There are also new faculties:
Graduate School of Health
Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation

If you want to confirm these faculty updates, click here

Thanks!

 

[grootz]

@The Matrix I did Networking Essentials last semester and got Credit for it, I'm doing Fundamentals of C Programming and Database fundamentals this semester which is probably the better structured UTS subjects I'm doing. The most cancerous of the lot is Advanced Digital Systems which is completed by ICT and Electrical Engo students, it's structured poorly with 2 quizzes worth 66% and 3 assignments worth 34% and no final exam. If ADS is not compulsory for you to do, steer well clear away from it, don't ever choose it.

 

[Deadboxes]

Subject Name: Foundation Mathematics
Subject Number: 35010
Faculty: Faculty of Science/Math
Semester: Autumn, 2020
Ease: 8/10
Lecturer: 5/10 - Julia Memar
Tutor: No tutor for the subject.
Subject Coordinator: 7/10
Interest: 7/10 - Interesting subject overall, esp if you didn't touch the more early calculus topics like me in high school (I did genny). There is a lot of homework, though, like, a lot, at least 5 - 15 hours a week to get through the allocated sets required to sit the tests throughout the subject and do the final.
Overall: 7/10 - Not as scary as I thought it'd be; make sure you actually do the homework and understand the ideas.


Subject Name: Mathematical Modelling 1
Subject Number: 33130
Faculty: Faculty of Science/Math
Semester: Summer session, 2020->2021.
Ease: 8/10
Lecturer: 10/10 - Ara Asatryan - Great and genuinely wants you to succeed.
Tutor: 7/10 - Alireza - generic tutor style.
Subject Coordinator: 9/10
Interest: 8/10 - Builds off of 35010 Foundation Mathematics knowledge, goes into matrices, vectors, integration, differentiation, sets and so on.
Overall: 8/10 - Great subject lecturer (a new one, the old one was chopped), MAKE SURE YOU REVISE THE PRACTICE MASTERY TESTS!!. I honestly think this subject was easier than 35010 Foundation Mathematics.
This subject replaced 33190 Mathematical Modelling for Science



Subject Name: Chemistry 2
Subject Number: 65212
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Spring, 2020
Ease: 7/10
Lecturer: 9/10
Tutor: 7/10
Subject Coordinator: 9/10
Interest: 8/10 - Builds off of Chemistry 1 ofc, interesting topics that weren't touched on in Y12 Chem, kinetics was a bitch, mid sem for kinetics also sucked, the average was just a mark under the pass mark for that one, but it doesn't have high weighting.
Overall: 7/10 - Don't think you can breeze through it as you did for Chem 1 just because you did chemistry in high school. Pay attention.

 

[Deadboxes]

Subject Name: Organic Chemistry 1
Subject Number: 65202
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn, 2021
Ease: 7/10
Lecturer: 7/10 - Alison Ung - slides were fucky when downloaded.
Tutor: 6/10
Subject Coordinator: 6/10
Interest: 8/10 - Builds off of Chemistry 2 (org chem topics). Interesting to know how the functional groups and synthesis of compounds occur
Overall: 6/10 - Much more difficult than Chem 2. Exam formatting (online) was horrible. My tutor was hard to understand.


Subject Name: Physical Chemistry 1
Subject Number: 65307
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn, 2021
Ease: 8/10
Lecturer: 9/10 - Brian Reedy - good, easy explanations, funny.
Tutor: 8/10
Subject Coordinator: 9/10
Interest: 8/10 - Exciting to understand and calculate thermodynamic properties that impact kinetics and chemical reactions.
Overall: 8/10 - Practicals were interesting too, but they have 5 reports you must write up + 3 tutorials for each subtopic + in-person exam, + 2 midsems for the two major topics.


Subject Name: Physiological Systems
Subject Number: 91703
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn, 2021
Ease: 9/10
Lecturer: 5/10 - George Herok
Tutor: 7/10
Subject Coordinator: 6/10 - George Herok
Interest: 8/10
Overall: 7/10 - Builds off Human Anatomy and Physiology, same subject coordinator and lecturer (Herok). Powerpoint slides/lectures looked like ass. I took the subject during Covid, so it was all online-based. Quizzes were pretty easy if you studied for them.

Subject Name: Analytical Chemistry 1
Subject Number: 65306
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Semester: Autumn, 2021
Ease: 7/10
Lecturer: 9/10 - David Bishop - funny, explains concepts well!
Tutor: 9/10
Subject Coordinator: 9/10
Interest: 8/10 - Delves deeper into analytical processes and techniques for identifying molecules, their functional groups, and through understanding these processes, you can determine unknown compounds.
Overall: 8/10 - A bit difficult at the beginning, pracs were interesting and in-person lectures were absent, there were also no lectures published, but instead 'workshops' (live zoom meetings with powerpoints uploaded)

 

[liamkk112]

subject name: mathematics 1
subject number: 33130
semester: autumn 2024
difficulty: 5/10 if u did 4u, 7/10 otherwise
teaching/organisation: 9/10 (lecs were really good and tutor was really good too, sometimes the lecture pdfs would be a bit weird which is only reason why it's 9/10)
enjoyment: 10/10
final mark: 100

this subject pretty much continues off from high school math content, assuming 2u knowledge. you go deeper into stuff like vectors, differential equations, sequences and series, and a fair amount of new topics are introduced including taylor series, sum defintion of integral in more detail, second order ODE's with constant coefficients, hyperbolic trig, matrices and so on. the subject probably would have been much more difficult if i had a 2u/3u background since pretty much the whole 4u syllabus was covered in just a few weeks. even if u did 4u though the subject certainly wasn't free, there was enough new material to at least have you completing a decent amount of textbook and tutorial questions to get comfortable, especially with things like cross product which introduced more 3d geometry and matrices which were completly new and took a bit to fully understand. the pacing is definetly slower compared to unsw math 1a advanced (as expected), id say its about similar to usyd pacing but a bit slower. our weekly quizzes weren't too difficult and pretty easy to get 100% on as long as u didn't make any mistakes, they already said at the start of the sem that they were there essentially to check that you watched the last weeks lectures. the tutorial questions and final exam had a fair share of difficult problems though, there was one particular problem in the final about how fast a rocket moved up given you being a certain distance from a pole that had a shadow cast from the rocket that was pretty hard took about 30 minutes for me to do (it was a 2 hr exam from memory). overall i'd say u will like the class if u liked 2u/3u/4u from high school since it's pretty much similar to that but in more detail, certainly wasn't a boring class but it would've been nice if uts also offered an advanced version like other unis.

subject name: discrete mathematics
subject number: 37181
semester: autumn 2024
difficulty: 7/10 (probably like a 8-9 if u haven't done proofs before)
teaching/organisation: 10/10
enjoyment: 10/10
final mark: 90

this subject essentially was an "intro to proofs" class if you like, we went into things like number theory (euler's theorem, applications to rsa), basic combinatorics and graph theory. essentially everything was a proof (as i expected for a lot of uni courses in math) so i could tell that a lot of people in my tuts who hadn't done proofs before were finding the subject pretty tough coz they weren't used to it. lectures were basically powerpoints and videos uploaded online but in person our lecturer went and did a bunch of questions and applications like calculating the probability of winning powerball or the number of routes to traverse melbourne's cbd which was fun. tutorial questions were decently hard at points, especially some graph theory, number theory or pigeonhole principle questions which usually required some sort of trick which once known made the questions fall apart. the biweekly quizzes were probably a 6/10 difficulty, usually there would be a few free questions and then 1-2 questions that would either be very prone to mistakes so u had to be careful, or would require a lot of algebra/explanation to get full marks. the final exam was more like a 7/10, we had some pigeonhole principle questions that im pretty sure i got very low marks for and some weird combinatorics identity (prove the sum of (C(n,j))^2 from j = 0 to n equals C(2n,n)) which required considering counting the number of paths on a grid which im also pretty sure i got low marks for. however these questions were also mixed in with some fairly free marks like truth tables or simple contrapositive proofs so it wasn't insanely difficult. overall the subject was really enjoyable even though i still hate combinatorics, especially learning about things like RSA which is essentially the most typical way that cryptography still works today

 

[carrotsss]

subject name: mathematics 1
subject number: 33130
semester: autumn 2024
difficulty: 5/10 if u did 4u, 7/10 otherwise
teaching/organisation: 9/10 (lecs were really good and tutor was really good too, sometimes the lecture pdfs would be a bit weird which is only reason why it's 9/10)
enjoyment: 10/10
final mark: 100

this subject pretty much continues off from high school math content, assuming 2u knowledge. you go deeper into stuff like vectors, differential equations, sequences and series, and a fair amount of new topics are introduced including taylor series, sum defintion of integral in more detail, second order ODE's with constant coefficients, hyperbolic trig, matrices and so on. the subject probably would have been much more difficult if i had a 2u/3u background since pretty much the whole 4u syllabus was covered in just a few weeks. even if u did 4u though the subject certainly wasn't free, there was enough new material to at least have you completing a decent amount of textbook and tutorial questions to get comfortable, especially with things like cross product which introduced more 3d geometry and matrices which were completly new and took a bit to fully understand. the pacing is definetly slower compared to unsw math 1a advanced (as expected), id say its about similar to usyd pacing but a bit slower. our weekly quizzes weren't too difficult and pretty easy to get 100% on as long as u didn't make any mistakes, they already said at the start of the sem that they were there essentially to check that you watched the last weeks lectures. the tutorial questions and final exam had a fair share of difficult problems though, there was one particular problem in the final about how fast a rocket moved up given you being a certain distance from a pole that had a shadow cast from the rocket that was pretty hard took about 30 minutes for me to do (it was a 2 hr exam from memory). overall i'd say u will like the class if u liked 2u/3u/4u from high school since it's pretty much similar to that but in more detail, certainly wasn't a boring class but it would've been nice if uts also offered an advanced version like other unis.

subject name: discrete mathematics
subject number: 37181
semester: autumn 2024
difficulty: 7/10 (probably like a 8-9 if u haven't done proofs before)
teaching/organisation: 10/10
enjoyment: 10/10
final mark: 90

this subject essentially was an "intro to proofs" class if you like, we went into things like number theory (euler's theorem, applications to rsa), basic combinatorics and graph theory. essentially everything was a proof (as i expected for a lot of uni courses in math) so i could tell that a lot of people in my tuts who hadn't done proofs before were finding the subject pretty tough coz they weren't used to it. lectures were basically powerpoints and videos uploaded online but in person our lecturer went and did a bunch of questions and applications like calculating the probability of winning powerball or the number of routes to traverse melbourne's cbd which was fun. tutorial questions were decently hard at points, especially some graph theory, number theory or pigeonhole principle questions which usually required some sort of trick which once known made the questions fall apart. the biweekly quizzes were probably a 6/10 difficulty, usually there would be a few free questions and then 1-2 questions that would either be very prone to mistakes so u had to be careful, or would require a lot of algebra/explanation to get full marks. the final exam was more like a 7/10, we had some pigeonhole principle questions that im pretty sure i got very low marks for and some weird combinatorics identity (prove the sum of (C(n,j))^2 from j = 0 to n equals C(2n,n)) which required considering counting the number of paths on a grid which im also pretty sure i got low marks for. however these questions were also mixed in with some fairly free marks like truth tables or simple contrapositive proofs so it wasn't insanely difficult. overall the subject was really enjoyable even though i still hate combinatorics, especially learning about things like RSA which is essentially the most typical way that cryptography still works today

good job on the marks wtf

 

[liamkk112]

im bored and results came out so im gonna yap more reviews

subject name: programming 1
subject number: 41039
semester: autumn 2024
difficulty: 5/10 (easier if you've done programming before)
teaching/organisation: 8/10, lecturer was nice and all the content could be accessed outside the lecture
enjoyment: 8/10
final mark: 97

this is just an average programming subject, goes into python and java with a bit of object oriented programming as well. nothing too out of the ordinary, since i've been programming for a while now it wasn't extremely difficult and the only new thing i had to learn was the object oriented stuff. the assessments were quite challenging though, for one of them we had to comment an entire program from scratch, and they were like research level programs so it was pretty tough (one was a biology evolution program using graphs and stuff, the other was a linear programming problem which was easier). they were pretty nice with the mark allocation though, a lot of the weighting was on weekly tasks that were pretty free, then that commenting assignment, a bigger project and then the final. nothing too bad though, and not a bad introductory subject for programming

subject name: fundamentals of c programming
subject number: 48430
semester: spring 2024
difficulty: 7/10
teaching/organisation: 8/10
enjoyment: 10/10
final mark: 97

coincidence that i got the same mark in both programming subjects lmao. but anyway this subject is a lot better than programming 1 imo, though it is much tougher since it's in c (obviously much harder than python/java, although actually after learning c i find it to be really intuitive). suprisingly programming 1 isn't a prerequisite for this, and also the main people who take this subject are electrical engineering students. this meant that the lecturer would always talk about embedded systems and why you need to use c, since its much more memory efficient and all. the group project we had was probably the standout assessment, it was based on encryption and compression so i ended up writing like 2000 lines or something to implement huffmann coding. it was pretty fun and we went into some advanced data structures as well (though they weren't heavily assessed, i mainly used them in the group project), i had to use queues, linked list, and trees to get things to work well. i liked that the subject was pretty open ended as well, they gave us a lot of opportunities to extend our knowledge and even allowed us to get extra marks if we presented a project lol. overall pretty fun

subject name: mathematics 2
subject number: 33230
semester: spring 2024
difficulty: 5/10
teaching/organisation: 8/10
enjoyment: 8/10
final mark: 97

this is the second math subject that most people will take at uts, it goes into multivariable calculus, statistics, and a bit more linear algebra than was covered in math 1. the linear algebra part was fairly chill, since we had already introduced matrices and vectors and all in math 1, we mainly went through eigenvalues and eigenvectors, gaussian elimination in more detail and also the geometrical interpretation of what we were doing with linear transformations. multivariable calculus was also not too bad, tbh after you've done single variable, not much changes by the time you up the dimensions. the best part about this part was the double and triple integrals, which let you derive stuff like the volume of a sphere for the first time (actually you can do it using solids of rotations from memory but tbh ive forgotten that method now lol). then there was statistics, which is well statistics. much more fun than high school though, we get into a bit more depth in the distributions, and also went through a lot of stuff on inference and hypothesis testing, then finished up with the basics of linear regression. tbh the hardest part of this was the statistics, but once you can remember the excel formulas it's alright. still a pretty fun subject thats very useful for setting up a lot of other subjects, though the tests were pretty free and the final exam was probably moderate difficulty

subject name: introduction to electrical and electronic engineering
subject number: 48510
semester: spring 2024
difficulty: 7/10
teaching/organisation: 9/10
enjoyment: 9/10
final mark: 94

this is the first subject that elec eng majors take, it's basically introductory circuit analysis with things like resistors, diodes, inductors, capacitors, and a bit of ac analysis too. omg this was so much better taught than what the hsc physics syllabus allowed for, i actually knew wtf was going on this time around (but maybe that's because of year 12 physics tho). the problems could get pretty difficult in this subject in the tutorials and practice questions, but eventually you just end up with a linear system of equations and from there cramer's rule is your best friend pretty much. the weekly quiz was pretty easy tho (but only worth a small part of the grade). the labs were super fun in the subject too, they also had open labs if you wanted to come in and do your own thing with the equipment they had. im pretty clumsy though so i would always break the wires or something else would go wrong lmao. overall not too bad in terms of the difficulty, though the final was decently hard and the lab tests as well. pretty fun, and also a prereq for like 99% of electrical engineering subjects which makes sense

 

[liamkk112]

subject name: real analysis
subject number: 35007
semester: spring 2024
difficulty: 8/10
teaching/organisation: 10/10
enjoyment: 10/10
final mark: 100

this subject is basically the first real "pure math" subject that you take at pretty much any uni. it kinda has a reputation for being hard so i studied for it a year early which i think definetly helped because omg i wouldve struggled so bad otherwise (although it definetly helped me out because i think the skills from this subject really carry over a lot). essentially this subject is all about building up the real numbers (though we didn't bother with the formal construction as it's not too important), and then doing calculus but properly defining what you are doing. all this meant really terse definitions for everything, i don't think i will ever forget the definition of a limit atp. it was really cool to actually prove the theorems you just kinda take for granted in other classes, eg the fundamental theorem of calculus which suprisingly isn't that hard to prove by the time you get up to it because of all the theorems you built before it. you also see where calculus falls apart and that it's a pretty imperfect theory, you can't even integrate a lot of stuff or switch limits easily (at least with the riemann/darboux integral). the first assessment was a hand in, which meant it was fairly easy to get good marks but the questions were pretty tough (eg proving am gm inequality for n variables, weird series and integral proofs, etc). then there was the midterm test which was alright if you did the sample ones, and then the final exam was pretty difficult and weird. overall i would've been screwed if i didn't start early (ik a lot of people were), but a really fun subject and the lecturer was rlly good (you could tell he knew what was going on really well)

subject name: probability and random variables
subject number: 37161
semester: spring 2024
difficulty: 9/10
teaching/organisation: 10/10
enjoyment: 10/10
final mark: 96

this was weirdly enough probably the hardest subject i've taken so far. it's pretty deceptive since it's just probabilty, but the questions we got assessed on were really hard (occassionally a proof, but otherwise something with LITERALLY 20 CASES that they had to give everyone full marks for lmao). luckily we were allowed to work in groups for 35% of the project, so everyone would get together and collaborate in the 2.5 hours we had to solve the weeks questions which was really fun. this class basically took probability way further than the elementary stuff in high school (except for the normal distribution which we skipped since u can't do it by hand rlly), we went into things like generating functions, law of total expectation and variance, weirder distributions, sums of random variables, markov chains etc. it was pretty cool to see a lot of the more advanced machinery that actually simplified things a lot, eg generating functions can let u discover the variance or expectation of a variable pretty easily. tbh i thought i wouldnt really like the subject bc i hated probability in high school but this was way more interesting than i expected. also the lecturer i had this sem wasn't the typical one, but he was really good and basically gave us the normal notes, then really detailed notes in mathematica that gave a bunch of examples. he went into so much detail that sometimes it was too much lmao but he explained everything so deeply which was nice