Minutes of Meeting 2, 2nd October 2013, AT 4.14a

Present: Alex Simpson, Kendal Reid (ITO), Class Reps

1.        SSR Member Introduction

A quick introduction of members was made, followed by Alex informing the meeting that occasionally Year Organisers will attend the meetings if any particular year concerns arise.

2.        Administrative Issues

Alex asked if everyone had managed to see the minutes from last week’s meetings on the Blog, no-one had read them but had seen the emails sent regarding issues from last week.  There were no current issues arising.

Daniel the UG2 Rep mentioned that there was a bit of an issue regarding the INF2A tutorials that started on Tuesday for Group 6, which is located in Room 4.14a, he felt that there was far too many students for the room size, but wasn’t sure if there was a confusion between Group 7, who are located in Room 4.14 next door.  Hopefully next week the tutorials will settle down and the rooms will even themselves out.

3rd/4th/MSc students said that there were a lot of students who were not on mailing lists, which is probably due to late course registrations and students changing tutorial groups.  It would help communications if lecturers sent emails to year lists rather than course lists for the first 2-3 weeks of semster. It would also help if all course announcements could be made on course webpages.

Many students have had problems with tutorial allocation. Theon now allocates students automatically to groups, so students are not given a chance to choose their own group. Students make their course registrations late (possibly for good reasons) are left unassigned at the time tutorials start. Also, students are experiencing difficulty/slowness when requesting a change of tutorial. E.g., students sometimes wait for the ITO to reply to a request only to be told that the chosen group is “full”, and so have to start the process again. Students have been finding it easier to pre-arrange tutorial swaps on Facebook.  It would be useful to see if some more satisfactory allocation procedure could be followed.

Nota bene is being used on a few courses TTS, IT, MLPR. However, lecture notes there are not downloadable. Lecturers should ensure that lecture notes are also publicly available from  course homepages.

Update: AS has contacted the course lecturers of TTS, IT, MLPR to say that lecture notes always need to be available off the course webpage even if nota bene is used. Incidentally, lecture notes are already available from the TTS and IT course webpages.

3. Facilities and Computing

The building work being carried out in Forrest Hill was very disruptive to lectures etc., this is now in the hands of the Timetabling Unit and Estate and Buildings.

Print Quotas that also arisen last week was sorted out that day by Computing Support.

The INF1-FP lecturer, Don Sannella, has been complaining in lectures about Haskell not being installed on  the in-house PC in Lecture Theatres.

Update: DS commented that he had been caught off-balance in the lecture because at that point Haskell was already installed in the open access IS labs and he had expected the LT setup to be the same. In any case, Haskell has now been installed on the LT computers so the problem has been solved. The reason DS wishes to use the LT computers rather than a laptop is that the video recording setup in the lecture theatres doesn’t appear to be able to capture what is on the laptop.

The NX facility that gives the student’s access to DICE on their own laptops outwith the University wasn’t always working well. It is, however, a prototype system, and issues with it should be raised directly with Computing Support.

4. Course-specific Issues

Students complained that the Professional Issues coursework one was now 10 days late in being realised.

Update: AS raised this with the course lecturers SA and PW. The coursework was released on 3rd October.

INF2A students complained that one of the tutors (Dave Cochran) did not have the solutions when the tutorial was taking place, so therefore wasn’t very helpful when it came to answering the students request for help and advice. AS mentioned that he had distributed sample answers to all tutors by email on Friday 27th Sep.

Update: AS asked DC whether he had received the email with the solutions. DC confirmed that he had, but that he had missed the attachment (which, however, was explicity referred to in the text body of the email). Anyway, DC is now aware that he should look for tutorial solutions in the weekly Friday emails to tutors.

It was asked how much training tutors get, as students felt they were not always very helpful! One of the class reps said that he had attended tutor training and did not find that it was very useful in suggesting ways of effectively communicating with students.

UG1 students said that the INF1-CL Lecturer Rahul Santhanam was still not talking loud enough and spoke too quickly for the students to understand what was being discussed. Also there were other minor issues such as: using a whiteboard marker which the students also found difficult to read, not responding to students with hands up wishing to ask questions. The UG2 Reps commented that they had found lectures last year hard to follow, but that the supporting notes on the course webpage were very helpful. The Inf1 reps thought many in the class might not be sufficiently aware of these notes.

Update: AS spoke to RS about these issues. RS was aware that he was having difficulty in communicating with the class. He particularly finds DHT LTB a difficult venue since it is full to capacity and has poor acoustics. Nevertheless RS will try to speak more slowly and clearly, and also to keep student noise down.

About Alex Simpson

Informatics Deputy Director of Teaching 2013-14, 2014-15
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