University College London
Computer Science Department
University College London
Computer Science Department
The meeting took place on 22nd May in 229. About 40 first year students and 6 lecturers attended (including SRW, JW, MAS, GR, GK, MS).
There was a definite feeling that students new to programming were at a considerable disadvantage in B11a and B11b.
B11a was felt to have gone well. The tutorial and workshop sessions were found to be very helpful and were adequately resourced. Miranda was felt to act as a leveler as few students had previous experience of a functional language.
B11b had suffered from a lack of resources. The tutorial sessions were dominated by the "hands-on" coursework marking. This meant that there was little or no tutorial support and that many students had to wait several weeks to get feed-back on their coursework. B11b contributed to a very high coursework load during the second term. Tutorials and help sessions with 25 students present were not effective and were the cause of many problems with the course.
B10 was felt to have gone quite well but would benefit from additional coursework.
B12 imposed a very heavy coursework load in term 2. The recommended texts were felt by some to be too hard. There were complaints of inconsistent notation but it was pointed out that this was a fact of life.
The lack of printed notes in B45 was regretted and it was felt that the whole course was rather rushed.
A large number of small pieces of coursework was felt to be ideal. Short class tests (10 minutes) were felt to be a good idea. Programming tests in class gave students practice in writing programs off-line which would be beneficial in exams. Writing programs in exams was felt to be tough.
There was general support for multiple choice tests and for automatic testing via the WWW.
Plagiarism was not felt to be a serious problem. Students did help each other but knew where the boundaries lay.
It was felt that the choice of books in the library did not support the courses well. It was pointed out that students should normally expect to have to buy a text for each course and this was generally accepted. The CS collection was being re-organised which might improve matters. Suggestion for additions to the library should be sent to Mark Levene (cc: Graham Knight)
Tutorial support was uneven. Some did well by setting specific exercises and discussing solutions. Others tended to close early with little or no discussion.
Small group discussion were felt to be very beneficial and there was support for additional sessions specific to courses.
One comment after the meeting was that tutorials seem to cease just when they are most needed - i.e. in the revision period.
Some MACS students felt that there first year programme had been over-dominated by CS and programming.