Subin Choi

Undergraduate Exchange in IT course

Home university: SOGANG University(Republic of Korea)

Actually, it is not my first time to be in Sydney. I stayed here for 8 months with working holiday visa in 2015, and I just fell in love with this beautiful city. I decided to come back to Sydney, and luckily, UTS was one of the partnership university from my home university!

Of course this wasn't the only reason why I chose UTS. Among all other Australian universities I can choose, my local friends recommended UTS to study IT because it is one of the leading university in the IT area.

The first two weeks of the semester were a really difficult time for me to adjust to UTS, because it was really different from what and how I've been studying for 4 years in Korea. My home university mainly focuses on lecture. We only have one professor to do the lecture, he/she is the coordinator and lecturer at the same time.

We have teaching assistant who mainly check the attendance, so I cannot say that he/she is the tutor like here. In contrast in UTS, my subject includes lecture, computer labs and tutorial, so it has coordinator, ​

​lecturer, and several tutors. There is also a big difference in tutorial or computer labs. In UTS, lecture gives a general information about the lecture subject, but it is not really related to what I am actually going to do in tutorial or computer labs.

It mainly requires to study by myself through watching online lecture from lynda.com or using relative teaching materials. However, in my home university, I rarely had computer labs or tutorials. It is good that all students learn same thing from same professor, and the knowledge we learn from lecture is directly related to tutorial (if I have one) or exam, however, lack of practising always makes me easily forget about what I learnt, and sometimes loose interest on subjects.

The biggest thing I like about UTS is that I have enough chance to practice during tutorial and computer labs, and make some results through what I learned and practised during the semester, which is more practical. Also, it has perfect modern facility that offers great environment for practising. Compare to UTS, my home university is small and does not have enough labs, so it is really hard for professors to organise the tutorial.

(Building 11 is Engineering & IT building. I usually have lectures, tutorials and computer labs here.)

(Inside Building 11, there are many rooms with great environment to practice)

For those reasons, as a student studying IT, I definitely think studying at UTS is a great chance to improve my skill and get more interested in the area.