Students, staff, and other users of the University Handbook can access the online handbook archive via a dedicated handbooks archive page. This page links to all previous handbooks in the existing handbook archive.

The University Handbook no longer contains unit of study descriptions or unit availabilities. However, unlike in previous versions of the handbook, every unit listed in the handbook’s unit of study tables is now directly linked to its associated page in the unit outlines website. 

This has been done for a few main reasons.

-      Students will now be more directly connected to richer and more comprehensive information about units of study to better inform their enrolment choices. In addition to unit descriptions and availabilities, this also includes information about unit content, learning outcomes, learning and teaching structures, and more detailed information on past assessment tasks.

-      Removing unit availabilities will substantially reduce (by over 50%) the number of late changes historically made to handbooks after their initial publication.

-      Removing unit availabilities will also reduce the confusion caused by the changing nature of unit availabilities between different years and semesters. 

From 2023, Senate resolutions will be published on the Senate website, which is managed by the University Governance Office. Additionally, publication of faculty resolutions is moving to the University’s Policy Register.

Direct links are being added to the Senate resolutions and, for faculty resolutions, to each of the faculty and University handbooks contained within the University Handbook.

The architecture of the new handbook website is similar to the previous handbook website. However, the handbook website will deliver improved navigation in a few main ways. 

-      The navigation options at the top of each handbook page have been customised so that students, staff, and other handbook users can navigate seamlessly to information across the University website that is directly relevant to use of the University Handbook. This includes key dates, course planning information and the University’s glossary of key terms.

-      Navigating backwards through handbooks has been improved by simplifying the ‘breadcrumbs’ at the top of each handbook subpage.

-      The handbook page directories are also clearer and enable both faster back navigation as well as improving the visibility of the information that can be accessed while navigating forward through the handbooks.   

 The search feature in the handbook website has been developed to exclusively search for information from within the University Handbook to enable faster access to the information that students, staff and other handbook users are looking for. 

Although the handbook search feature is consistent with the University website’s global search feature, handbook search will only work within the handbook website. Once launched, you can continuously search the University Handbook from the search results page.      

In the past, errata have been published at the top of the relevant handbook pages, but the actual content that should have been changed has been untouched. In the new handbook website, we will make these changes directly on the page. This means that the handbook will always be as current as possible.   

However, late changes will continue to be identified as ‘errata’ within the new handbook website. We will indicate where these late changes have been made in both the page (or pages) the change applies to and in the post-publication change register page attached the University Handbook landing page.

Some course and unit of study information is not contained in the University Handbook, such as course application deadlines, enrolment intakes and information about unit of study fees. This information can be accessed via the Sydney Courses website.

Information about support for enrolment planning and academic advising can be accessed via the Current Students website.