Brief notes from third year “wrap-up” session, June 2001
The meeting was less formal, more relaxed and more vocal than the others. It was attended mainly by MSci students. Only one BSc student was present.
Individual and group projects were too much - apparently a very strongly held view.
Response: Next year's group projects will be more structured with regular check points. It was felt this would make the work more contained. GAR adds "I'm still waiting for any objective evidence that the individual + group projects were actually too much, rather than just attracting comment from students..."
These need to be available in good time. They were felt to be extremely helpful to revision.
Response: Policy was that lecturers "should" provide sample papers for new courses. We will try to encourage this. We would welcome feed-back from students on progress.
It is only possible to take two options; more would be better.
Response: The large core enabled us to provide depth - things a real computer scientist should know.
Maybe there could be some compaction with topics combined into one module. This had worked well with 2B14 which was liked.
The 3rd year was much harder than years 1 and 2.
Response: It was supposed to be.
The professional issues day had been badly timed.
Response: Yes - reading week was suggested.
System modelling part in 2B14 was not felt to be useful - there was no need to answer the question in order to pass the exam. Could this make way for something to be brought forward from year 3? Some system modelling material was repeated in the 3rd year course.
Response: It was felt that system modelling skills were important for CS students and could be useful in some projects.
There was too much maths (B46) and much of this was A-level revision.
Response: The maths content would be reviewed.
CS students valued the options both for good liberal educational reasons and for the reduced pressure compared with CS core courses.
Response: Good
Accreditation had not been an important consideration in choosing UCL. University's reputation as a whole was more important. 2 (out of ~8) students were student-members of BCS, none were members of IEE.