In our continuing effort to enhance the quality of our teaching, attention has been turned to the written guidance that our students receive about courses that they undertake. The advent of the Web means that it is increasingly open to course providers to make details of their courses available through that medium, but there remains the need for a paper booklet which can readily be consulted and which contains, in one convenient location, as much information about a particular course as the students are likely to need.

Course guides will inevitably vary enormously. Thus a guide to a first-year course taken by an enormous number of students and well backed-up with established college supervision arrangements will be very different from a guide to a Part II course taken by a smaller number of students who, for the duration of the course, will become de facto members of a Department, with out-of-hours access, the likelihood of close acquaintance with staff members, the need for detailed guidance on the use of Departmental computer facilities etc. A single course booklet is much preferable, as a way of providing information, to a series of isolated - and sometimes mutually contradictory - pieces of paper, e-mails, haphazard word-of-mouth advice etc., which give an impression of muddle and shifting goalposts. It should be possible to determine the ground-rules for any course before it starts, and to set these out with clarity.

The following might be headings in a Part I course booklet

• Introduction to the booklet and the course, including name, address & e-mail address of course organizer
• Description of the course
• Aims of the course
• Learning objectives: (by the end of the course, you should be able to ....)
• Overall strategy adopted to enable you to learn: what should you be trying to get out of the course, and how should you set about it? Here refer to the enabling role of College Directors of Studies and Supervisors.
• Information about staff and venues
• Lecture timetable: dates, times, people and places
• Lecture synopses
• Books and other resources suitable for the course (include references to past examination papers, collections of past questions, and published advice on use of calculators and how to buy them).
• Library arrangements in the Department
• Useful WebSite addresses (distinguish between Departmental Web pages, and resources in the wider world)
• The practical classes: dates, times, places, what they consist of, the timetable, and the arrangements (and requirements) for attendance and writing up.
• Arrangements for field-work
• How to get the most out of lectures (here refer to advice that may be given by College teachers, as well as "course-based" advice)
• Arrangement for feedback of your opinions about the course
• Notices issued by Course Organisers in response to student comments from previous years
• Assessment: arrangements for "formative assessment" and "summative assessment". Formative assessment involves discovering and telling students how they are progressing during the course; summative assessment is about "the examination" - see next paragraph.
• The Examination: Regulations; Form and Conduct Notices; and general advice
• Classing criteria and samples of previous papers in the form of this year's exams
• Information about examination skills and any formative assessment
• Names of student representatives where known and procedures and dates for electing them
• Names and emails of persons to whom students may turn in respect of specific problems (it may not always be course organiser who needs to be approached on all matters).

The following might be headings in a Part II course booklet

• Contents page
• Introduction to the booklet and the course: welcome, informal history, of course and Department, main people involved.
• Aims of the course: the formal statement
• Learning objectives: (by the end of the course, you should be able to ....)
• Overall strategy adopted to enable you to learn: what should you be trying to get out of the course, and how should you set about it?
• Lecture timetable: dates, times, people and places
• Lecture synopses: perhaps 2-4 line synopses for each lecture (if students take only selected parts of a larger course, it may be unnecessary to provide all students with detailed synopses of all lectures).
• Departmental security: arrangements for keys, access cards, anti-theft advice &c.;
• Names, Colleges and e-mail addresses of all students on the course: so that they know each other
• Library arrangements in the Department
• The tea toom: dos and don'ts
• Access to references: how to gain access to references
• Computer arrangements within the Department
• Useful Website addresses
• Contact addresses and phone numbers (+ e-mails) of all course contributors
• Biographical notes on course contributors: some information about the people who will be teaching you
• Home Office issues: the Law, and each licence-holder's responsibilities
• The practical classes: what they consist of, the timetable, and the arrangements (and requirements) for attendance and writing up
• Advice re. in writing research projects/dissertations
• Advice on literature searching
• How to get the most out of lectures
• Tips on the critical reading of scientific papers
• Giving a seminar / preparing a poster
• Supervision arrangements
• Arrangement for feedback of your opinions about the course
• The Examination: Regulations; Form and Conduct Notices; and general advice
• The Examiners - with a note on Assessors
• Classing criteria and samples of previous papers in the form of this year's exams
• Information about examination skills and any formative assessment
• Names of student representatives where known and procedures and dates for electing them
• Names and emails of persons to whom students may turn in respect of specific problems (it may not always be course organiser who needs to be approached on all matters)