DOWNLOAD COURSE FORMS
AND GUIDELINES

Have you thought about doing your bit for U3A, but felt that you weren’t ‘expert enough’ to run a course?

The good news is that you don’t need to be a retired academic or schoolteacher to prepare and present a course. If you have a passion for anything, chances are that among our 3700+ members there are others who might like to hear about it. A scan of the Prospectus demonstrates the diversity of subjects and activities currently offered. There are many other possibilities to form the basis for courses. What can YOU offer? A course can be any length, from just one or two hours to two or more weekly sessions. You can choose the length of your course and its timing to fit in with your other activities and venue availability. And you might consider roping in a few like-minded friends or members to help you run it. Here are some ideas to get you started:
Capitalise on our unique Canberra environment
Talks by overseas representatives—Can you organise talks by Embassy Cultural Counsellors about their countries? Perhaps a session weekly or monthly.
Visits to our National institutions
Titles like: The Hidden Canberra, Behind the Scenes, Out and about Canberra.
We have lots of volunteer guides within our ranks; perhaps they could assist by talking about or arranging visits to their institutions possibly including behind the scenes areas. Perhaps gather for coffee afterwards. The possibilities are numerous, but to get you thinking consider these: War Memorial, National Archives, National Library, National Museum, Museum of Democracy, New Parliament House, AIS, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, High Court, ANU, St John’s Cemetery, Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station, Tidbinbilla Nature Park, (combine these last two on a day trip, with lunch?)
Canberra’s parks and gardens
Discussion and also visiting gardens, for example: ANBG, Commonwealth Park, Parliamentary Rose Gardens, National Arboretum, Floriade, Private gardens, etc.
Sculptures
SCULPTURES OF ANU (a member did conduct two sessions on this a few years ago; there are a surprising number of sculptures in the grounds).
SCULPTURES OF CANBERRA (there are plenty: outside public buildings, along roadways, in parks).

Course Material Sources

Members should be aware that there are two sources of existing course material which are accessible by our members and which can be used to design and present courses without doing all the hard research work. One is from the Resource Library established by the NSW U3A Network. The other is held by U3A Online Inc. Even if you don’t want to start up a course but would like to expand your mind, some of the material accessible
through the Resource Library website is just darn good reading.
Topics covered include: Literature, Creative Writing, 5 Minute Philosophy, Advance Care Planning, European History, Macrohistory, Explorers, Famous Australians, Radiation, and Guide to the Internet. A catalogue of courses is provided on the library’s website, together with instructions on how to obtain material.

If you have run a successful course yourself and have a good set of course notes, you might like to share your knowledge with others through the Resource Library. Drop a line to the Manager of the library (Mel Davies); there’s a hot link to her provided on the library’s home page. She would love to hear from you.
For more details contact Trevor Bruhn or another course coordinator.

Safety at U3A courses

Our advice is that U3A ACT must now comply with the recently enacted ACT Workplace Safety Act 2008. Among other things, this requires us to take all reasonable steps to ensure the health and safety of everyone attending any course or activity. Additionally, U3A ACT’s public liability insurance places an onus on our organisation to take all reasonable steps to identify and reduce risks likely to lead to a situation involving a claim.
In view of the above matters, course leaders or organisers need to be mindful of health and safety issues which may affect themselves and members attending their course or activity, and where possible reduce any risks related
to such issues. As an example, all effort is to be made to ensure that in class rooms the placement of chairs, tables, equipment, power leads, etc does not impede clear access to seating and exits, or otherwise provide a hazard to movement of class members. Any stated room limits must be adhered to. Also course leaders/organisers will need to identify and then inform their class of emergency exit routes from the class room or building and the assembly point outside the building.
Where a course or activity is not held in a building, all effort is to be made to identify likely safety hazards in relation to conducting that course or activity, and to inform participants of such hazards if they can’t be avoided or eliminated. There is also a requirement to ensure a record of attendance is made and kept for each class session wherever held, and that in the event of an accident or incident arising at a course or activity a report be prepared and forwarded to the U3A ACT Secretary.
For further details see the following documents:-
 Information for Course Leaders and Members        
Class Attendance Record        
Accident / Incident Report .

Short guide

A short guide has been prepared to help inform prospective course leaders about planning and presenting courses for our U3A. If you wish to obtain a copy, please contact Robyn Beetham on 6290 1899 or collect one from the U3A office at Hughes.

Plan your PowerPoint presentations

Course leaders are reminded that it is their responsibility to ensure-before any lesson in which they plan to do a PowerPoint presentation with one of U3A's data projectors and laptop computers-that they are competent in the use of the projector and computer. This may require them to read the instructions which are provided with each laptop and data projector before setting the equipment up. It is not the responsibility of our Equipment Officer to bail out presenters who get caught short.

Would using email help in organising your course?

More and more people these days use email all the time and find it very helpful in organising their lives. Would more of this be helpful in organising our U3A courses?

Some course presenters are already offering members the option of using email to enrol in their courses, and more do this each year. But what about during the course? Would it help if the presenter could get in touch by email? This might be particularly useful for courses where the focus shifts from one session to the next: for example in current affairs groups, or in book groups. Or in a crisis, where the class arrangements have to change. It is much easier to create a message to 12 or 20 people than to telephone each of them. This is of course a matter for each group to consider-if and when it wishes. However, to try to help make it easier for groups choosing to do this, the Course Co-ordinators are going to add a new column to the course enrolments form which we send out to all course presenters to help them in organising their courses, so that email addresses can be readily listed if you wish to do so.

Any e-mail addresses that appear on the U3A website will be encrypted to prevent them being used to send spam.

Help for New Course Presenters

Most course presenters like to have a bit of contact with members wanting to join their courses before they start. However, it sometimes happens that new presenters cannot, or prefer not to, handle calls from members wishing to join their course. For this reason, the Course Coordinators have been able to assemble a small group of volunteers who have kindly agreed to do the job of taking enrolments for new presenters. If any new presenter would like in future to avail themselves of this service, they can do so through the Course Coordinators.