§ · For unit coordinators

For the person whose name is on the results file.

A unit coordinator carries the outline, the team, the exceptions, the marking and the results, usually on top of a full teaching load.1 2 Coord is the desk that carries the paper.

Set up your first unit Read the tour

A sandstone cloister corridor with columns and long shadows, in ink duotone. — Fig. 1The corridor between the lecture and the office.

The front page.

Every offering opens on one page: the Week Ruler with today's caret, countdowns to the hard dates, what is due this week, marking progress by marker, exceptions open with their timers, and gaps in the team roster. Nothing is more than one page away from it.

Nothing falls through.

The term plan is back-scheduled from the dates you cannot move: census, outline approval, the early-feedback task, the feedback turnaround, exam lodgement, results due, the board. Each item has an owner and a date, and the ruler shows them as ticks.3

The team, paid correctly.

An allocation plan from activity codes and rate cards, allocated hours against actual hours per tutor per week, a request-before-the-work flow for additional hours, the approver recorded, and a timesheet-ready export. Every rate is labelled estimate, not payable: payroll is the system of record.4 5 6

The results night.

Totals from the grade engine with your scale's bands and codes, per-student holds for open cases, the distribution against previous offerings, and the results file shown exactly as it will be written. Everything is provisional until the university publishes it.8

Handover.

The handover pack gathers key dates, the team, policies, files, decisions and open items into one document the next coordinator can read in an hour.10

Notes

Median annual hours as course coordinator: 275 at Level B, 155 at Level C (665 academics, 2016 and 2018 surveys). Kenny, J. and Fluck, A. (2019) Australian Universities' Review 61(2).
71% of university staff regularly work beyond their paid hours; about one in three full-time staff work 48 or more hours a week (about 11,500 staff at 42 universities, October 2025 to January 2026). NTEU, Australian Universities Census of Staff Wellbeing, 2025.
Teaching-period dates (start, census, break, study week, exams, results) are taken from each university's published academic calendar for 2026 and 2027 and stored, never derived. Where a calendar was not published, the date is marked inferred. University academic calendars, retrieved September 2026.
Marking is separately paid work that cannot be rolled into a lecture rate, and “the amount of associated time actually spent is a matter for the employee and not subject to direction by the employer”. Full Federal Court of Australia, Torrens University decision, 17 March 2026.
Wage theft has been a criminal offence nationally since 1 January 2025. Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Act 2023, commencement 1 January 2025.
“There should be no averaging of hours across multiple weeks … to ensure that the University complies strictly with its record-keeping obligations”; marking within seven days of a class cannot be bundled into the tutorial rate. The University of Queensland, guidance note on casual academic hours, 2026.
Fair Work enforceable undertakings in the sector between 2023 and 2026 exceed A$71 million (University of Tasmania A$21.4m, Monash A$20.7m, Wollongong A$6.6m, UTS A$4.4m, QUT A$1.9m). Fair Work Ombudsman, enforceable undertakings register.
Coord complements and never replaces the university's curriculum system, LMS, student system or payroll. Every mark it emits is provisional until the system of record publishes it. Product statement; see Trust.
On 17 December 2025 an Australian university reissued every Semester 2 results email after a processing error sent many students another student's grades. Student press and university statement, December 2025. The university is not named here on purpose.
Coordinator-to-coordinator handover is a recognised failure point: RMIT built a course-handover tool, and the University of New England's policy requires records of coordinator decisions. RMIT research repository; UNE Course and Unit Coordinator Policy.