Search for courses
Use the Course Search & Enroll tool to find courses. For best results, use a laptop or desktop computer rather than a tablet or smartphone.
Search with filters
Before you begin your search, choose the current term using the “Term” drop-down menu found on the upper left-hand side of the page.
On this page, we detail only the filters that are most useful to Special students and Guest auditors. There are more filters covered on the registrar’s KB page, Ways to search for classes.
Use the down arrow on the right side of the “Subject” box to bring up a list of departments and select your department of interest, for example, astronomy. This will show a list of courses for the department.
If you don’t know the department for a course or topic of interest, you can search using keywords (leaving the subject filter blank). For example, if you want to find courses about the universe, use that as your keyword to get a list of classes that have that term in the title or description. This brings up classes that include your keyword(s) across different departments.
Examples of other terms you can use for a keyword search:
- Instructor name
- Class title
- Course descriptions
For hints on how best to use the keyword search, the registrar provides information on Searching with keywords.
You can refine department offerings by using keywords. For example, you want to take a course about black holes. Using astronomy as the department, use the keywords black and holes to find courses in astronomy that have those words in the title or description.
To search for online courses, use the “Mode of instruction” filter and select “Online all” for both synchronous and asynchronous courses. In the results, you will see both synchronous and asynchronous courses.
Asynchronous courses do not have dates and times listed
Synchronous courses have dates and times listed
Your search can be limited to class sections that are “Open,” “Wait listed,” “Closed,” or combinations of these.
Course Search and Enroll looks at seat availability in real time. Your search results may change as sections fill.
We recommend that Senior Guest auditors search with all three seat options selected (“Open,” “Wait listed,” and “Closed”).
Accessing course information
Once you find a course, you can review the course description, sections, time, location, instructor, and more. Here is an overview of what you will find in the course and section panels.
Once you have found a course you are interested in, learn more about the course by selecting it. On the right-hand side of the page, the course description will appear along with other details about the course.
See sections
To see the various class sections, use the blue “See sections” button at the top, right-hand side of the page.
Courses may have one or multiple sections.
Learn more about a section
To learn more about a particular section, click the down arrow to the left of the section. Many courses have a lecture (LEC) and multiple discussion (DIS) sections. Some also have labs (LAB).
To find out more about a specific section, select the down arrow to the left of the section.
Course time, location, and instructor
Look for the days and times, location, and instructor in each section.
Senior Guest auditors attend only lecture (LEC) sections.