Study materials

As a distance education student, all your study materials are conveniently available online or delivered to your home or workplace by mail before your course begins. These include printed study notes, CD-ROMs and DVDs, and online resources.

Subject outline

Your Subject Outline located in your CSU Interact subject site online tells you when your assignments are due, when residential schools are on and what texts you will need.

Subject outlines contain all you need to know about your course including Subject Coordinator, contact details, textbooks, assignment details, exam information and details of other support services.

Study guide/module

Study guides, or modules,will help you learn by providing information on key concepts, how to tackle the readings and will give a commentary on how to work through the subject. Often there are self assessment tasks and other activities which will help your understanding of the content. It may provide alternative perspectives or views to those presented in the text book and readings. This will help you appreciate different views and to broaden and deepen your understanding of the discipline of which the subject is part. Some study guides are written as a series of modules to assist your learning.

Study modules contain activities that encourage you to apply your learning to the real world.

They may be available online in your CSU Interact site in the Modules of Resources tool, or sent to you in CD/DVD or printed format

Readings

Readings are usually journal articles or chapters from books included to provide essential information, broaden your perspective, or provide a supplement to set texts. Don't be daunted by the volume of set readings. Look through your subject outline or study guide to find out the relationship of the readings to topic, and if there is any set reading order. Read the abstract or summary of a journal article or key ideas if available in chapters. Glance through the article to note its structure, and look for the outcome or findings of research, chapter summaries or conclusions.