Brief notes from third year “wrap-up” session, 28 May 2002

Present:    9 students (from the BSc and MSci), Robin Hirsch (Chair), John Washbrook, Graham Roberts, Jill Saunders.

Points raised:

1.    Options
The third-year MSci students present were very unhappy at the limited range and numbers of 4th year (advanced) options available.  Those that will run do not necessarily offer much scope to the students given the need for prerequisites. They felt that the Department should have been able to make it known in advance what was likely to run.  In response, it was explained that we had three members of teaching staff leave last academic year, and that replacements could not be appointed to take over immediately.  Unsuccessful attempts had been made to arrange one course (Databases) with another College.  The view was expressed that students might have made different choices at the end of year 2 if they had known about the situation. It was also misleading that so many syllabi were published on the web but would not be running.  (ACTION: Deptadmin to amend web pages).

The possibility of students taking prerequisite courses in Term 1 in order to take the advanced course in Term 2 was discussed. This was not recommended.  It was mentioned that Bernard Buxton had suggested the possibility of 4th years taking a VIVE course.

2.    Group Projects

The BSc finalists felt that the group project had gone on for too long and that an earlier hand-in date would allow people to concentrate better on Term 2 coursework  Those present agreed that there was a heavy load on 3rd year BSc students given that they were also tackling their individual project. (ACTION: GAR to look into adjusting the timings/arrangements for the Group Project).

3.    Tutor arrangements

RDH asked whether people were generally happy with the tutor support they received in year 3 (ie group project tutors and, in the case of BSc finalists, individual project tutors).  The answer was generally yes.

4.    Databases course

There was general agreement that a Databases course was needed. It emerged that the course COMPC320 taught for EE was too easy.

5.    3C16 Professional Issues and Technology Management

Several people were disappointed with the 3C16 course because some material was duplicated elsewhere (3C05 Advanced Software Engineering) and Management Studies Centre courses.  Some people were particularly unhappy because it had been a compulsory course.  On the other hand, one other student had been happy with the course and found it very relevant.  RDH undertook to look into this further.

6.    3C05 Advanced Software Engineering
Some students reported that the group work for this course had been problematic, probably because the course was designed for larger numbers but had only a dozen or so students on it, thus making the numbers in the groups very unbalanced.

Jill Saunders
29 May 2002