DCS Auditing Policy

I often get asked the question:
Can I sit in on (audit) your course?
Here is an answer, cribbed from the Department of Computer Science instructor's advice page. I myself welcome anyone who wants to sit in on my class, but just so you know what the official rules are:

To audit a course is to sit and listen to the lectures, and perhaps to the tutorials, without formally enrolling.

Auditing is acceptable if the auditor is a student at U of T, and no University resources are to be committed to the auditor. The "must be a student" condition means that students of other universities, employees of outside organizations (or even of U of T itself!), or any other non-students, are not permitted to be auditors. (If we did not have this rule, the University would require us to collect auditing fees, and we are not willing to do that.)

The "no resources used" condition means that auditors do not get computing accounts, cannot have term work marked, and cannot write exams. In other words, they cannot use instuctors time, TA time, or administrative resources of any kind.

An auditor may not attend class unless there is an empty seat after the last regularly-enrolled student has sat down. That sounds frivolous, but in fact it is an aspect of an important point: if enrolment in a course has been closed because the room size has been reached, then there may well be physical seats for auditors, because it is rare for every student to appear for a lecture, but auditors will not be allowed to enrol later on in the course, even if some students drop it. Neither instructors nor the department can waive this rule.

Often these conditions are perfectly acceptable to auditors; we don't mean to ban the practice, but only to live within the University's rules.

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