Electives
Having room in your course to choose an elective gives you great flexibility in your course.
What is an elective?
Many courses at Deakin allow you to undertake an elective. You'll know if your course has electives by reading through the course structure, and the course map which you'll find in the University Handbook.
Electives are different to core units in that they don't have to be directly related to your course of study or even from the faculty you are in. Generally, a course will allow you to choose an elective from most other courses at the same level as your course.
How do you choose an elective?
Consider choosing an elective that:
- complements or builds upon the things you are learning in your core units or major. For example, if you’re studying law, you might be interested in some politics or history units
- is unrelated to your course. It may be something you’re interested in or something different you'd like to try. For example, you might add a language elective to your science degree.
When choosing electives, check the University Handbook for your course rules (the year you commenced your course), to find out if you have electives in a certain trimester. Then, use the advanced unit search option in the Handbook to choose the study period and search a keyword for the study area you’re interested in to view your options.
Remember that some units have prerequisites so when you search for units to choose as an elective, you can tick the 'Units without prereqs/coreqs' so only units without pre/corequisites are returned.
Need help?
Plan ahead and look over your course map so you know when you're expected to take an elective.
If you need help to choose one, a student adviser in Student Central can help.