All courses at Brock are labeled the same way, with 4 letters, a number, a letter and 2 more numbers. For example, our Introduction to Psychology course is PSYC 1F90, which can be broken down like this:
PSYC – The department in which the course is being offered. All Psychology courses start with the abbreviation PSYC. A full list of these abbreviations can be found in the Brock University Undergraduate Course Calendar - from the main page (under "Table of Contents"), click on "Course Anatomy" and scroll down.
1 – The level of the course. This is a first year course; a second year course would have a ‘2’ here, and so on.
F – The credit value of the course. This is a full credit course; partial credit courses would have a ‘P’ (or, occasionally, a Q or a V) here. (See here for an explanation of the full and partial credit system.)
90 – The specific course identifier. We only offer one first year course, but have several different courses in second year and above. These last two numbers differentiate these courses from each other. For example, our second year cognition course is PSYC 2P20, while our second year learning course is PSYC 2P45.
TIP What Does 'Alpha' refer to in the degree requirements? The Undergraduate Calendar lists requirements in a specific way, using precise language. For example when requirements are to take a certain number of credits at a particular level, the calendar will read: “one PSYC credit numbered 2(alpha)00 to 2(alpha)89” (this is an example from 2nd year). Many students wonder what ‘alpha’ stands for.
Alpha is used in place of the letter in the course code (‘F’, ‘P’, or ‘Q’) so when you see this, it just means a course numbered between 200 and 289 (in this example). The requirement could be fulfilled with PSYC 2P21 and PSYC 2P27 or PSYC 2F87 (there are no such courses, this is just an example).