Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 14th October

 

Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 14th October 2020

In attendance: Bjoern Franke Director of Teaching, Neil Heatley Head of Student Services, Lisa Branney Student Support Officer,  Caro Dow Computing Support, Jade Gilhooly Deputy Teaching Organisation Manager, Kendal Reid ITO

UG1

Paul Anderson has spoken with the UG2 Reps and they were holding a talk today with the UG1 students to give tips and advice on how to help with the transition to University and advise on how to manage their time and deadlines.

It was also mentioned that there will be an Academic Families events planned soon,  and an upcoming games night.

The below link should also help with Communications:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/edhelp

The Blog for these meetings can also be found here:

https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/issr/

UG3

Overall

Good

  • Accessibility of content online
  • Content posted on time
  • Active Piazza boards, office hours and clear times for things across ILP IDB and PI
  • Interesting courses

Bad: Lack of information on assessments

Suggestions: Better filing system in Learn, more consistent

Introduction to Applied Machine Learning (IAML)

Good: Has provide enough quizzes to test our understanding of the materials to compensate the materials that cannot cover online

Bad: Poor quality of lectures / not enough explanations

Informatics Large Practical (ILP)

Good: The early deadline for CW1

Bad        Material needed for assignment only taught 1 week after it was published

Labs are overcrowded and unstructured

Suggestions: Upload the ILP lectures earlier (at least the slides)

Introduction to Databases (IDB)

Good: Extremely well put together and the lecturer has been great at communication and online teaching

Bad: Quality of live lectures are really bad: the audio and video keep on breaking

Suggestions: Upload more materials / examples to solidify knowledge

Algorithms and Data Structures (ADS)

Bad

  • Lack of tutorials, tutors reading off solutions without answering questions
  • Lecturer not being very informative on the course content
  • No mechanisms for asking for help – no live lectures and no piazza forum has not been set up
  • Students have reached out to course organiser to start a Pizza page, but their emails have been ignored

Suggestions

  • Keep us informed about what is/should be going with the course, from tutorials to coursework
  • Add weekly quizzes like some other courses implement so as to be better prepared for coursework and the exam
  • Create Piazza page

*Action Bjoern to talk to the lecturer*

Introduction to Vision and Robotics (IVR)

Bad: The lectures don’t give sufficient material to explain how to do the work being set out

UG4      

Positive Feedback:

– People are enjoying their Honours projects.
– IAML is more enjoyable than expected because it is so applied.
– Live lectures are good and feel more interactive than pre-recorded ones some courses have.
– HCI is interesting and the coursework is good.

HCI the coursework was released 6 days before the deadline.

*Action Bjoern to talk to the lecturer*

NC the students feel that the course is disorganised and the audio and video quality in the recordings isn’t good.  Bjoern has spoken to the lecturer and he has decided to switch from live to pre-recordings.  There is no reference to the materials on the slides and there is a weakness between the quizzes and the lectures.  The students would also like more book references to study.

*Action Bjoern to talk to the lecturer*

IQC could the whole solutions be recorded for the tutorial sheets?  The course lacks in organisation, reference for the reading for the Quiz due in week 4, was only added in week 3, which is worth 20%.  There was no information on what the style the quiz would be and the slides had missing information but was written in the tutorial solutions and it wasn’t obvious.

*Action Bjoern to talk to the lecturer*

General

Carol has asked the Reps to  inform their class mates NOT switch off or shut down the DICE machines, as it makes it difficult to switch them back on, especially remotely.

It was asked when the Training from EUSA will be announced.

*Action Ammir to talk to EUSA as the School Rep*

There appears to be communication issues as some students are struggling with English as their second language.  Bjoern is aware that there are students who are struggling with English, Neil and Bjoern have been liaising with Admission Teams.

*Bjoern you may want to change this, as I am not entirely sure*

It was asked if the non-detrimental policy will be in place this year, some students are struggling with no split between working at the University and working from home and are struggling to get a balance between the two.

There is a clash between the Rep meeting being held at 2pm with the live IRR lecture but there is also a clash at 1pm with the UG1 live lecture.  If  students are able to attend the meeting they can add their comments to the Teams chat, that will then be put onto the Blog.

Appleton Tower now has a live booking service that can used to book rooms.  Some students reported that they couldn’t get it to load or work, which has to be done whilst connected to DICE for this to work, also the non-honours students said they felt the space was probably required more for the Honours students and it also isn’t always possible to find times that works for their schedule.  New students have never been in the building so they are not sure what the layout is.  Further information can be found in the below link

http://web.inf.ed.ac.uk/infweb/student-services/ito/students/informatics-buildings/study-spaces-for-students/student-study-spaces-booking-system

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