The minutes were prepared by Susannah Moat and Greg Paperin and have been amended by Robin Hirsch.  Responses to some of the student suggestions appear in italics.

Contents

1. Lack of guidance to answers to past exam papers
2. Insufficient range of Programme Options
3. Configuration of the departmental computer systems for undergraduates
4. Programming Advisory Service
5. Students' dissatisfaction with the SSCC

Staff have always refused to provide model answers to past exam papers, giving the following reasons:

• model answers could encourage students to believe that there is only one correct answer
• students may also be tempted to memorise answers, rather than try to understand the material

The representatives present at this meeting proposed that it was possible to meet these requests by supplying something other than model answers. The following ideas were suggested:

• Guidance to mark allocation - ie, more than just the number of marks earned for the question as given on the exam paper. For example, students could be told what general stucture to the answer was expected and how different points/sections of the whole answer were weighted.
• Common mistakes. The common mistakes made by students who had taken the exam could be given, and better alternatives could be explained.
• Examples of points which could be included in the answer to gain marks. For longer questions, this could consist of a list of topics which should have been covered.

It should be noted that although a marking scheme does exist for every exam paper set, it is not possible to publish these schemes, for the reason that problems could arise if students were to complain about marks awarded on the basis of the information contained within these marking schemes.

Chris Walker mentioned that there had been a discussion at the Joint Staff Student Consultative Committee about an attempt to standardize the approach to the topic of answers given to past exam papers between the different departments across the College.

This item was taken to the Teaching Committee Meeting (TCM) of 12/12/01.  There was a lengthy discussion about this at the TCM.  The main view was that learning was an essentially active process.  From this point of view, a written 'guide to answering exam questions' would not be appropriate.  However, it was recognised that students should be given some guidance on how to approach their exams.  The TCM felt that the best  way of providing this guidance was for lecturers to provide directed feedback to those students who had attempted sample questions. 
 

2. Insufficient range of Programme Options

The student representatives pointed out that there is currently a very small range of subjects available as "programme options", and the area from which they are selected seems to be arbitrary. 

Robin Hirsch agreed with this, but explained that there are problems in making more subjects available due to timetabling issues.

It was therefore suggested by the representatives that a much wider range of subjects should be accepted as programme options, with the responsibility to ensure that any option taken fitted in with the Computer Science core timetable left to the student.

The area from which the programme options could be selected, could include for example Maths, Physics, Managment, Biology and other courses.

Robin Hirsch saw some merit in this The final decision on subjects to be included in this new scheme will be made by Robin Hirsch, Denise Gorse and the Teaching Committee.

This item was raised at the TCM of 12/12/01.  It was agreed that a wider range of options should be allowed as program options.  However (as noted above) there would be no guarantee that these options would avoid timetable clashes.  Students will be responsible to check their own timetables.

3. Configuration of the departmental computer systems for undergraduates.

Many undergraduate students feel that the default configuration of their user accounts is not very convenient. The most common issue is the wish to have "bash" rather then c-shell as the default shell, and other concerns were mentioned as well.

On requests of individual students to the helpdesk to configure their accounts for more convenient use, the helpdesk refused, giving the reason that every user account cannot be configured differently, since it would make system administration impossible. When asked about the reasons for the current configuration, the helpdesk explained that the following matters had to be considered:

• The software must consistently run on all the different Unix/Linux platforms used in the department.
• Licensing issues.
• Many decisions on the configuration were made 10 or 20 years ago, when some alternatives which exist now were not yet available.

4. Programming Advisory Service.

Following the discussion about the lack of demonstrators for undergraduate lab sessions, Robin Hirsch mentioned that the idea of a "Programming Advisory Service" had been suggested. This would be something which students did on a voluntary basis to help other students. The work of such an advisor would mainly consist of being available for programming advice in the undergraduate labs at designated times. 

However, the student representatives expressed the concern that finding volunteers for this scheme may present difficulties. If the work was paid for however, the scheme could work well. Robin Hirsch said that the possibility of paying undergraduates would be investigated further. 

The department intends to run a pilot scheme next term. 

5. Students' dissatisfaction with the SSCC.

There had been some dissatisfaction on the part of the students with the past SSCC meeting. For example, students felt that they had not been treated with the same respect as they were expected to show to staff. In many cases, students felt that they had simply been shouted down or dismissed by staff. This was not seen as appropriate behaviour for a meeting. Robin Hirsch said that he would ask staff to be as courteous towards students in the meeting as they would expect in return. 

Other ideas which were proposed in order to improve the way in which SSCC meetings were run were as follows: 

• There had been a request for more detailed minutes, but this was mainly as students felt that the current style of minutes did not reflect the attitude of many staff during the meeting. This problem however would be solved by the conclusion made within the discussion above, ie that staff will treat students with the same respect as they expect from them. It was agreed that the current style of minutes was therefore adequate. 
• It had been noted that there were more issues which students wished to discuss than the time given to SSCC meetings permitted. The representatives also felt that the nature of issues discussed at the SSCC meant that meetings were required more than twice a year. It was agreed that these proposals would be discussed at the next SSCC meeting. 
• The official guidelines for Departmental SSCCs states that consideration should be given to the idea of alternating the Chair of the SSCC between students and staff. The representatives present felt that this was a good idea, and would give more balance to the meetings.

The representatives suggested that Chris Walker, as a member of numerous Union Councils, had a lot of relevant experience and would be an ideal candidate for this role.  Robin Hirsch said that this would be considered 
• Chris Davis suggested that it would make sense for a representative to compile the list of undergraduate issues for the agenda to avoid issues which had previously been discussed being brought up repeatedly. Robin Hirsch agreed. 
• In order to allow SSCC members (both staff and students) to prepare for SSCC meetings, it was agreed that the agenda should be closed and published a week before the meeting. This should also make it easier for staff to decide whether it would be useful for them to attend or not.