Plan
About your timetable
When you start working out your timetable, good advice to remember is:
1. Semester, trimester or teaching period?
When you click on each course in your course list, you can see whether it’s offered in a semester, trimester or teaching period (TP).
Semesters
An academic year at UQ has three semesters: Semester 1, Semester 2, and Summer Semester (optional for most programs).
Semester 1 and Semester 2 are usually 13 weeks long and Summer Semester is usually eight weeks.
Pay careful attention to your course list – some courses aren't offered every semester or every year.
When you view a course profile, go to ‘Learning Activities’. This will show you the exact dates when a course is taught.
See an example from the catalogue
Trimesters
If you're studying the Associate Degree in Business at UQ College, your academic year is split into three trimesters. Each trimester usually runs for 14 weeks, with a break in between.
Pay careful attention to your course list – some courses aren’t offered every trimester.
When you view a course profile, go to ‘Learning Activities’. This will show you the exact dates when a course is taught.
See an example from the catalogue
Teaching period
Most courses are taught during semesters, but a small number are taught in non-standard teaching periods (TP).
An academic year has eight teaching periods, running from the beginning of January (TP1) to the end of December (TP8).
Teaching periods run on different schedules to semesters. While semesters are usually 13 weeks long, teaching periods are between four and eight weeks long.
Pay careful attention to your course list – a course may be offered in a teaching period or in a standard semester.
When you view a course profile, go to ‘Learning Activities’. This will show you the exact dates when a course is taught.
See an example from the catalogue
2. Does this course have unique dates?
Some course dates diverge from semester schedules.
We recommend checking the course date variation tables to see whether your course has unique dates.
3. What day, what time and where?
Use the My Timetable planner to see class options for courses you're enrolled in.
It's important to remember that the planner is just a tool for planning class schedules. You aren't guaranteed a spot in any class until you complete class preferencing and allocation (if you need to).
To start planning your timetable:
- Select 'Planner' from the My Timetable menu.
- Click 'Generate' to create an initial timetable.
- Select classes on the grid to swap for preferred days/times, as necessary.
- Click on the 'Save' icon to name and save your plan. You can create and edit multiple plans.
Reference your preferred plan when entering your class preferences.
You can also use the public timetable to see class timetables for any course (not only those that you're enrolled in).
To view the class options for any course:
- Select the semester from 'Teaching Period' menu.
- Enter the course code into the search field and click 'Search'.
- In the side menu, select the checkbox for the course.
- Click 'Show Timetable'.
- Click the 'Show as list' icon
4. Class allocation
When a course has lots of options for class times, you'll need to register your preferred times through My Timetable – our class allocation system.
Class preferencing usually begins about 4 weeks before the semester begins– check the Academic Calendar for the exact dates.
If you have used the My Timetable planner and saved a preferred plan, you can enter those class preferences into My Timetable when class preferencing opens.
We'll teach you how to enrol and register your class preferences in the 'Enrol' step.
How can we help?
Feeling a bit muddled? No worries. We're here to help:
starting@uq.edu.au Contact Student CentralRead more on my.UQ
Report any problems you experience with the Starting at UQ website.