ASP Geoscience Coursework Curriculum

The Geoscience coursework curriculum is common to most of the geoscience programs offered by the School. Its aim of the curriculum is to give students a comprehensive knowledge of the major disciplines and tools, used in petroleum geoscience. It was set up following extensive consultation with the petroleum industry, and is periodically reviewed to ensure its continuing relevance.

The curriculum comprises over of 30 separate courses. It starts in late January and finishes towards the end of June each year. The courses are presented by School staff, academics from other institutions, and industry experts. Courses are presented in modular format, i.e. as a series of consecutive short courses, varying between one and nine days in length, depending on the topic. The format is different from the "interleaved" presentation of subjects common in most undergraduate courses. This structure allows external lecturers to teach and industry personnel to attend the courses.

ASP's multidisciplinary philosophy is reflected in the course curriculum. Approximately 20% of the course time is devoted to advanced geological and geophysical topics. These are alternatives, which allow the student some specialisation. The remaining 80% of the course time comprises a core set of geotechnical topics, which are taken by all students. These cover the basic concepts and techniques, which need to be understood by any professional geoscientist in the petroleum industry. Such topics include structural geology, clastic sedimentology, reservoir description, sequence stratigraphy, wireline logging and seismic interpretation. The operational, commercial, managerial and legal aspects of petroleum exploration and development are also covered. There are several field trips, including an 8-day excursion to the Amadeus Basin in Central Australia, and, whenever possible, a visit to an area of current drilling and production operations. Most courses involve considerable practical work and, where appropriate, students obtain hands-on experience with industry-standard computer software.

Click on the links to see a list of courses and the timetable for this year's coursework curriculum.

Almost all courses three days or longer are assessed by written examination, practical exe rcises, oral examination, or a combination. Many of the one and two day courses are not assessed. This does not mean they are unimportant, but is more a reflection of the tight schedule. The final result for the coursework curriculum is an average obtained by weighting the marks for the individual courses by the respective lengths. Failure in a course does not necessarily result in overall failure of the curriculum. For this reason, supplementary examinations are not offered, nor may courses be repeated.