Public landing page: www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/computer-science
Course lists: www.cs.ox.ac.uk/teaching/courses/ True to form, courses appear to have identifiers, e.g. The "course materials" section of each course leads to courses.cs.ox.ac.uk/ which is paywalled by IP (accessible via Eduroam): TODO which system does it use? Some courses place their materials directly on "www.cs.ox.ac.uk", and when that is the case they are publicly accessible. So it is very much hit and miss. E.g. www.cs.ox.ac.uk/teaching/courses/2022-2023/quantum/index.html from Quantum Processes and Computation course of the University of Oxford has the assignments such as www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/aleks.kissinger/courses/qpc2022/assignment1.pdf publicly visible, but e.g. www.cs.ox.ac.uk/teaching/courses/2022-2023/modelsofcomputation/ has nothing.
qi
for the Quantum Information course of the University of Oxford rather than more arbitrary A1/A2/A3, B1/B2/B3, naming convention used by the Mathematics course of the University of Oxford and the Physics course of the University of Oxford, and URLs can either have years or not:- www.cs.ox.ac.uk/teaching/courses/qi/: no year: goes to latest
- www.cs.ox.ac.uk/teaching/courses/2023-2024/qi/: has year, fixed year. Disgraceful repetition of redundant 2023-2024, but OK.
Handbook:
- 2022:
- general www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/13731/CS%20Handbook%20final.pdf
- Year 1 (Prelims): www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/13794/Handbook%202022%20Part%20C%20-%20V1.3.pdf
- Year 2/3 (Parts A/B): www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/13793/Handbook%202022%20Parts%20A%20&%20B%20V1.3.pdf There is some mixture on which courses can be taken on year 2 or 3. This also implies that they cannot have the usual A2/B2 naming scheme. They just don't have names instead mostly. It is also the most beautiful illustration of why you shouldn't do Compute Science at university: there's no depth to the subject. You can just take random courses and you learn it all quickly. Section "The only reason for universities to exist should be the laboratories".
- Year 2 has four mandatory core courses:
- Models of Computation
- Algorithms and Data Structures
- Compilers (mandatory for compsi, but not mathematics and computer science)
- Concurrent programming
- A only:
- Probability
- Hilary term
- Concurrent Programming (mandatory for compsi, but not mathematics and computer science)
- Quantum information
- Year 2 has four mandatory core courses:
- Year 4 (Part C): www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/13794/Handbook%202022%20Part%20C%20-%20V1.3.pdf
- Michaelmas term
- Bayesian Statistical Probabilistic Programming
- Concurrent Algorithms and Data Structures
- Quantum Processes and Computation
- Computational Learning Theory
- Computational Biology
- Advanced Complexity Theory
- Graph Representation Learning
- Hilary term
- Advanced Security
- Database Systems Implementation
- Ethical Computing in Practice
- Law and Computer Science
- Quantum Software course of the University of Oxford
- Geometric Deep Learning
- Foundations of Self-Programming Agents
- Deep Learning in Healthcare
- Michaelmas term
Moodle instance of the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford.
Has a mixture of open access and closed access. But at least it can have open access unlike the in-house systems such as Canvas where everything is necessarily paywalled!
Sometimes things appear open but don't show any meaningful content if you are not logged in, which is annoying.
But at least it gives a clear public course list, thing that certain departments (cough Department of Physics of the University of Oxford cough).
The organization is a bit crap, when you expand e.g. C Michaelmas term it shows nothing, just a search.
The way to go is via the year year categories e.g. "Year 2022-23": courses.maths.ox.ac.uk/course/index.php?categoryid=734. Term splitting is annoying, but one can stand it.
There seems to be no way to list all versions of a single course across multiple years besides just doing a search e.g.
From the 2020/2021 Oxford physics course handbooks we can determine the following structure:
- Year 1 (CP, "Coure Preliminaries", "Prelims"). Take all of:
- CP1 Classical mechanics, Special relativity
- CP2 Electromagnetism, circuit theory and optics
- CP3 Mathematical methods 1. Complex Numbers and Ordinary Differential Equations. Vectors and Matrices.
- CP4 Mathematical methods 2. Multiple Integrals and Vector Calculus. Normal Modes, Wave Motion and the Wave Equation.
- Year 2 (Part A). Take all of:
- A1 Thermal physics. Kinetic Theory, Heat Transport, Thermodynamics.
- A2 Electromagnetism and optics
- A3 Quantum physics. Quantum Mechanics and Further Quantum Mechanics.
- Short options: at least one of:
- Mathematical Methods
- Probability and Statistics
- S01 Functions of a Complex Variable
- S07 Classical Mechanics
- S10 Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy
- S13 Teaching and Learning Physics in Schools
- S14 History of Physics
- S20 History of Science
- S21 Philosophy of Science
- S22 Language Options
- S25 Climate Physics
- S27 Philosophy of Space-Time
- S29 Exploring Solar Systems
- S33 Entrepreneurship for Physicists
- Year 3 (Part B). Take all of:
- Michaelmas term
- Hilary term
- B1 Fluids
- B3 Atomic and laser physics
- B5 General relativity
- B7 Classical Mechanics (for MPhysPhil only?)
- B8 Computational Project
- B9 Experimental Project
- Year 4 (MPhys). Select two from:
- C1 Astrophysics
- C2 Laser Science and Quantum Information Processing
- C3 Condensed Matter Physics
- C4 Particle Physics
- C5 Physics of Atmospheres and Oceans
- C6 Theoretical Physics
- C7 Biological Physics
Trinity term, the third and final term of each year, contains mostly revision from the previous two terms, after which students take their final exams, which basically account for their entire grade. Trinity is therefore a very tense part of the year for the students. After that they have summer holidays, until coming back for the next year of madness.
The official external course landing page: www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/physics. 2021 archive: web.archive.org/web/20221208212856/https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/physics) In those pages we see the rough structure, except that it does not have the course codes "A1" etc., and some courses are missing.
At web.archive.org/web/20221229021312/https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2011-06-03/course_v3_pdf_80151.pdf page 11 we can see the global course structure giving the two options, 3 year BA or 4 year Oxford physics masters:
Year 1
(Prelims)
|
|
v
Year 2
(Part A)
|
+-----------+
| |
v v
Year 3 BA Year 3 (MPhys)
(Part B) (Part B)
| |
| |
v v
BA Year 4
(Part C)
|
|
v
MPhys
Practical courses notes: www-teaching.physics.ox.ac.uk/
Some others with lecture notes:
- Andrew Steane users.physics.ox.ac.uk/~Steane/teaching/lecture_course.html also books. No license. Cute HTML quantum error correction one: users.physics.ox.ac.uk/~Steane/qec/QECtute.html
Each term has 8 weeks, and the week number is often used to denote the time at which something happens.
Week 0 is also often used to denote the week before classes officially start. This is especially important in the first term of the year (Michaelmas term) where people are coming back to school and meeting old and new friends.
At the end of the year, after Trinity term, students have exams. These basically account for all of the grades. In certain courses such as the Physics course of the University of Oxford, there is only new material on Michaelmas term and Hilary term, Trinity term being revision-only. So you can imagine that during Trinity term, students are going to be on edge.
Bibliography:
- cherwell.org/2023/11/10/oxfords-term-structure-needs-to-change-heres-why-it-wont/ some criticism of the term organization on Cherwell because the terms are too short which increases student pressure to learn fast