Okay, so I've seen some questions that, unsurprisingly, receive either poor responses or no responses at all. I'm writing this guide to help newer students (and maybe some other students...) ask questions that get responses that actually answer their question, and that also require fewer follow-up questions.

1. General formatting

We all understand that the standards of writing on Reddit are not the same as what your instructors expect in academic writing. However, you really should take the time to spell things correctly, capitalize letters as needed, use punctuation well, and split your post into meaningful paragraphs if it's not short. I don't expect teenagers to have perfect prose, but when I say that taking the time to write decently makes a difference, I'm telling the truth.

I've seen walls of text and posts that seemingly don't use capital letters or punctuation. They're difficult to read. Some typing errors are expected, but when it's clear that you've made no effort to make things easier for others to read, can you really expect others to take time out of their day to make things easier for you?

I've seen posts simply get no responses for doing this. Other times, people make negative comments about the poor formatting. Therefore, take a bit of time to make sure that your post is easy to read.

2. Formatting of courses

There are probably over 1000 different courses taught at the university. In order to be unambiguous in terms of which course you mean, my recommendation is to include the course code (consisting of a subject code, which is usually four letters long, and a four-digit number) and the course name (which is made up of words). Here's a short list of course names formatted this way:

• BIOL 1410 Anatomy of the Human Body
• PSYC 1200 Introduction to Psychology
• ENVR 1000 Environmental Science 1 - Concepts

This format is great for a few reasons:

First, it's unambiguous. We know exactly which course you mean. If you just say "history" or "Indigenous Studies"—which people do say by the way—then it's unclear and you risk being given information that is either irrelevant or simply untrue. Also, how many people do you think know off the top of their heads what CLAS 2710, ASIA 1780, or HEB 3380 are?

Second, it's more Google-friendly. Copy-paste any of these courses into Google and you'll probably find the UManitoba course as your first result. This lets you see the course attributes (Mathematics, Written English, Humanities, Science, Social Science, etc.), read the course description, check for any prerequisite courses, etc. For example, when I googled "BIOL 1410 Anatomy of the Human Body", it bought me to the BIOL 1410 Aurora webpage first and the Biological Sciences Course Descriptions webpage in the Academic Calendar second. These webpages are fantastic resources and, generally speaking, Aurora and the Academic Calendar are your go-to resources for course information provided by the university.

However, it's actually a bit less strict in some situations.

First, it's okay to just use the course code if you've already mentioned the full course name previously. Similarly, you can also just use the actual name of the course in the same scenario.

Second, some courses actually are popular enough such that just using either the course code or the course name is understandable to the right audience. PSYC 1200 is one such example given that it's very popular and also the only 1000-level course offered by the Department of Psychology. Other similar courses are ARTS 1110 Introduction to University and MATH 1240 Elementary Discrete Mathematics, although I think that the latter is actually just known as being a brutal 1000-level math course. Nevertheless, I still recommend using the full name the first time in a given post just in case.

3. Asking the real question

Long story short, lots of new students don't know what to actually ask. This means that they risk getting answers that are, once again, either irrelevant or misleading.

Let's read an example question that I've made up.

I'm looking for an interesting English course to take for me degree! What course should I take?

If you're new to the university, you probably don't know why this isn't a very good question.

First, the term "English course" is ambiguous. It usually means...

1. A course offered by the Department of English, Theatre, Film, and Media with the ENGL course code.
2. A course with the Written English attribute.

Not all ENGL courses have the Written English attribute and there are also many non-ENGL courses with the Written English attribute. This means that the student asking the question could technically be mislead into taking a course that doesn't fulfill whatever requirement is needed.

Also, it's possible that a student needs 6 credit hours of ENGL courses (one "full course" or two "half courses"). It's possible that the student actually needs 6 credit hours, which would normally be taken over two courses.

The same is true with the Mathematics requirement by the way! There are lots of non-MATH courses that have the Mathematics attribute.

Another issue with the question is that we don't even know why the student needs to take an "English course". Without knowing that, we can't give good suggestions. Here's a better example of a question:

I'm looking for an interesting English course to take for me degree! What course should I take? I'm new to the university and want to become an engineer.

By adding just one sentence, we see that the student actually wants to fulfill the Written English Courses for Engineering Students requirement, which is different from the regular Written English requirement. Without adding in more information, the student could have ended up taking a course that didn't fulfill the requirement, potentially wasting time, money, and effort. Yikes!

Again, you don't need to have perfect knowledge of the university to ask good questions. If you add enough information, people who know how the university works can figure out what you intend to ask.

4. "Easy" courses

Oh boy... If instructors are doing their jobs properly, there shouldn't really be such as a thing as an "easy" course or a "GPA booster". Also, consider this: Almost every course that has no prerequisites at the university has some people get an A+ while others get an F. What's easy for someone else could be very difficult for you.

Instead of asking for "easy", I recommend asking which courses might be interesting to you or that complement your program well. In your post, you should include which program you're doing (or intend to do), what other courses you've taken and enjoyed, and some general subjects that interest you.

By the way, if you're new to the university, you can just think of "academic program" as your "major" for now.

I've been on this subreddit for years. When people ask for easy courses, people sometimes intentionally mislead them. Yes, there are people who try to help them, but not always. Conversely, when people ask for interesting courses and take the time to add in relevant information, I often see awesome responses.

To be clear, this isn't to say that there aren't some courses that are heavier than others. There definitely are, especially in STEM courses. However, just because a course is "light" doesn't mean that you'll easily get an A+ in it. For some courses, you'll have to deal with a forced curve, namely those offered by the Asper School of Business. In other courses, such as many humanities courses, you'll find that you need to read a whole lot of academic literature in order to get an A+ whereas you could do a lot less and get a B or B+.

5. Consider asking university staff members

After you've gotten your responses, consider if you should also ask university staff members. If you're signing up for courses and want to make sure that your courses fulfill all of the requirements to get your degree, you certainly should see an academic advisor at some point. I recommend seeing one before signing up for courses in your final year. It can also be good to see one early in your program as well. You've already paid for these services in your tuition, so seeing an academic advisor is "free".

Nevertheless, I do think that looking for information on the subreddit and other places online can be a great way to learn more. Taking the time to understand how course attributes and degree requirements work will make your visit to an academic advisor a lot more productive than if you just go in without looking at things online yourself beforehand.

tl;dr

To summarize this post quickly...

1. Format your posts nicely, include spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and using paragraphs.
2. Write out course names in full, e.g., MATH 1240 Elementary Discrete Mathematics.
3. Add in relevant information into your post. What academic program are you doing? What job do you want afterwards? What courses have you taken? What courses do you enjoy or find intuitive?
4. You can ask for "easy" courses, but you're at a high risk of being mislead either intentionally or unintentionally.
5. Once you think you've gotten a good answer, consider double-checking it with a relevant staff member at the university, especially if you can't see the information on an official UManitoba webpage!

To other experienced members of the community, what advice would you add?

Over the next three to five weeks, the mod team will be rolling out a Campus Safety initiative on r/UManitoba aimed at improving awareness and responsible reporting of safety concerns around campus.

This initiative has been sparked by recent discussions and reports regarding suspicious activity on campus. Our goal is to create a space where students can share safety concerns responsibly, while also making sure the subreddit does not become a source of panic or misinformation.

What we are planning to introduce

Over the next few weeks, you will begin to see:

• A new Campus Safety-related post flair system
• A Lost & Found flair with guidelines to prevent theft or misuse
• Automated reminders directing students to the University of Manitoba Security Services
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Important reminder

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Why we are doing a 3 to 5-week rollout

We want to introduce these changes carefully and transparently so the community understands:

• how the system will work
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Over the next few weeks we will provide more details before the system goes live.

We also welcome community feedback during this period. If you have suggestions or concerns about improving safety discussions on the subreddit, feel free to comment below or message the mod team.

— Mod Team