Department of Physics

Attendance requirements

The Board of Studies in Physics, of which all full-time academic staff are members, is responsible for ensuring that students are coping with the courses and meeting their academic commitments.

You are required

  • to attend practical classes
  • to attend tutorials
  • to attend examples classes (including general problems classes)
  • to attend workshops
  • to attend seminars
  • to attend presentations
  • to undertake project work
  • to submit assessed work (whether formatively-assessed or summatively-assessed)

as per the "Teaching Methods and Contact Hours", "Summative Assessment" and "Formative Assessment" sections of the relevant module descriptions.  Should you fail to attend compulsory classes or to submit work, this will be noted and will soon result in an informal warning.  Persistent default will result in a formal written warning, which may be followed by the initiation of Faculty procedures.  It is your own responsibility to ensure that your attendance is recorded by signing the relevant attendance sheets.

You are expected

  • to attend lectures

as per the "Teaching Methods and Contact Hours" sections of the relevant module descriptions.

You are also expected to arrive at your classes on time: arriving late causes unwanted disturbance, particularly in the case of lectures, and you will quickly become unpopular with both students and staff.

Fulfilling your academic commitments 

The General Regulations of the University include the following:

All students engaged in full or part-time study (excluding those registered on a Continuation Fee basis) are required to fulfil their academic commitments.
(a) To that end undergraduate and taught postgraduate students shall, as required by the regulations governing the degree or other programme or module for which they are registered:
(i) attend courses of instruction in the University in each of the subjects required to the satisfaction of the Heads of Departments or Schools responsible for those subjects;
(ii) fulfil all academic obligations, including registration and those obligations defined (in the relevant module outline as published in either the Faculty Handbook or Postgraduate Module catalogue as appropriate) as being required to demonstrate academic progress in the modules for which they are registered to a standard satisfactory to the Heads of Departments or Schools responsible for the subjects.

Frequently-asked questions

The FAQs below are extracted from the main FAQs page, http://www.dur.ac.uk/physics/students/faqs/.