Dealing with Deakin
Contact with lecturers
Your lecturers are your academic colleagues. They are the facilitators of the knowledge that you have come to Deakin for. So how best to work with lecturers to ensure you get the most out your time here?
Lecturers are busy people. In the past - perhaps a couple of decades ago - the job of an academic was to research in their field of specialty and to teach students in that field. These days, lecturing staff are responsible for teaching students, research, many administrative tasks, marketing, public relations, management of staff and acquiring funding for courses.
Apart from structured lecturers or class time, you will need to seek your lecturers out. Generally speaking, this will be via phone or email, and if you're on campus you may be able to make face- to- face appointments to see them.
Contact them about class content and clarification of assessment tasks (assignments and exams). You may want more of their time, but this may not be possible. So use to your advantage everything else the Uni has to offer.
The best way to find out what services are available - as well as who provides them - is to work your way through the Getting Started at Deakin website.
Dealing with administrative processes
How does a university work? Universities are large and bureaucratic organisations. This can, at times, make dealing with universities frustrating. It can also make you feel like you're dealing with a large, faceless entity. The best thing to do is find a way to negotiate it all, so that you can keep your study rolling.
It's a combination of people and processes that you need to work with. And hopefully, most of the time, things will work as you would expect. And when they don't, follow the processes to get them sorted.
First thing, make sure you keep all the documentation from uni in the one place: hard-copy documents (administrative info on matters such as enrolment), study materials, informational CD-Roms.
Activate your student email, to make sure you're receiving all electronic contact.
Scan everything that comes in for important dates or action items. This takes time, yes, but can help keep things running smoothly. One idea would be to set aside a small bit of 'administrative' time as part of your study timetable.
Think of it as going through your uni in-tray. You do this for work, you probably do it for home too. (How else do bills get managed, renovations done, pets vaccinated etc.?) Like anything else, being organised is key.
Further information
- A-Z directory of Deakin
- Current students
- Deakin Software Library
- Getting started at Deakin
- Off campus orientation
