Support for Evening Students

By the nature of the course most part-time evening students are working during the day. This limits the time that they, as students, can spend in the University on their coursework. However, there are a number of ways that we will try and help you with your course.

Undertake Work at Home

The department, where possible, can give students software to work from home, for example Visual Studio, Java and Oracle, or can advise on where to buy software at student prices. Part-time students will get preferential treatment in getting software from the Technical Support Team if they let the team know they are studying part-time.

The drawback of working at home is that you do not get the support you would if you where working in the labs as you are not able to ask the Technical Support Team for help. If you email your lecturers with questions they will help, additionally you can email the Technical Support Team and they will either answer your question directly or send it to a more appropriate person. Please make it clear in your message that you are a part-time student. If you are not sure who to contact, please see our contact details Technical Support Team

Weekend Opening - Sorry, this is temporarily suspended

The CST labs are open at the weekends on a Saturday from 10:30am to 4:30pm; however technical support is limited. At the moment we do not plan to open on a Sunday unless there is sufficient demand and the Saturday opening is well attended.

We will consider arranging a one off session with a member of staff who can help if a sufficient number of part-time students agree to the time and content. On a Saturday it might be possible for us to run an hour's session on Oracle or Java. However, this will rely on part-time students organising a group to come in at a set time.

Weekday Opening

The CST labs are open during the week and you are welcome to use the labs. I would recommend avoiding busy times for practical sessions. Take a look at the Opening Hours page for our term time open times.

If you do come to the labs and it is busy, please ask a member of the Technical Support Team and we will go around the labs and ask students not working on academic work to leave and free a machine for you.

Obviously, if you are in the labs and need help with your course work please ask a member of the Technical Support Team who will either be able to help you or direct you to a person who can.

The Learning Resources Centre (Library)

The LRC is open 24/7 for the library and 08:30 - 17:30 for the IT Suite. This is longer than the CST labs but the LRC lacks a lot of the software we use. Nevertheless, the LRC IT Suite is a useful resource as we are gradually increasing our site licences and installing a wider range of software.

LRC Update

We now have 8 of our PC's located within the LRC. These can be found on LRC L2 (level 2). These PC's have the same software installation as our generic PC's in the CST Labs.