Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 6th October 2022

Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 6th October 2022

In attendance: Bjoern Franke, Director of Teaching, Neil Heatley Head of Informatics Student Services, Toni Noble Deputy Teaching Organisation Manager, Mitchell Hunter Computing Support Officer, Chloe Downing Student Adviser, Marjorie Brewer, Kendal Reid ITO

Bjoern welcome everyone to the meeting and thanked the Reps for volunteering to be part of our weekly meetings and explained that the purpose of these meetings was to cover any issues that arise giving the School a chance to rectify negative feedback and pass on any positive feedback.

Toni asked if any students would be willing to volunteer to be part of the Board of Studies meetings with members of academic staff that meet three times in Semester One, three students came forward and gave their names to Toni.  These meetings are held to discuss things such as changes to degree programmes, curriculum degree structures, prerequisites, learning outcomes, new courses and how the coursework and exams would like and volume of coursework.

UG3

ML there are no tutorial solutions made available!  It is a fast paced class and you are expected to pick up a lot of Maths quickly and when you are working on the tutorials in class, there is a lot of content and the student don’t have time to complete all the questions before the end of the tutorial.

It was asked if ML is a pre-requisite for 4th year MLP

The DRPS Page states:

It is RECOMMENDED that students also take Applied Machine Learning (INFR11211) OR Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition (INFR11130) OR Accelerated Natural Language Processing (INFR11125) OR Data Analysis and Machine Learning 4 (ELEE10031)
Students MUST also take: Informatics Project Proposal (INFR11147) OR Case Studies in Design Informatics 1 (INFR11094) OR Honours Project (Informatics) (INFR10044) OR MInf Project (Part 2) (INFR11093) OR MInf Project (Part 1) (INFR10051) OR Individual Project in Advanced Natural Language Processing (INFR11192)

It is recommended that students have taken a previous course in machine learning (or with significant machine learning content). Those who have not MUST register for one of the co-requisites noted above.

UG4

BDL the course has a very clear explanation of what is expected and the first lecture was explaining the coursework.

TTDS the lectures are 2 hours long, the students feel that the lectures keep the students attention as they have demonstrations included within the lectures.

MLP has good lectures although it can be based a lot around Maths, and is quite a complicated course.

ST the Course Organiser decided to pre-record his lectures and make an in-person lecture more interactive, the students feel that this has doubled up their teaching time on this course, they would prefer not to watch a pre-recording, as they feel during COVID they missed out a lot of University life and would much prefer to have it all on campus.  The students ran a survey and 89% agreed to on campus teaching as it is better for their mental health.  Bjoern suggested the students take this forward with the Course Organiser.

Introduction to Bioelectronics  released their slides for the whole 11 weeks at the start of Semester one, which the students found very helpful.

COMN the classes are very good, it does on campus and hybrid teaching, the students are enjoying the course.

Honours project there is a talk tomorrow Thursday 6th regarding the UG4 Projects on how to gather background research but the students feel that this should be held in week 1 to give them more time.  There will be a Dissertation Workshop held in Semester 2, week 2.  Once students pick their chosen project it is up to the student to work on their project as they please and use the Supervisors for support and guidance, the Projects will be released in January.

MSc

NC the room is very small and students are having to sit on the floor.

*Action Neil*

COMN the students aren’t able to refresh when completing their Quizzes, if you refresh it submits your work without being able to go back to it.

*Action Neil to talk to the Learning Techs*

MLP is hard to connect to DICE remotely, Mitchel recommended connecting to the VPN and having a look at the Computing Support web page:

https://computing.help.inf.ed.ac.uk/remote-working

Students can also use the Drop-in service:

https://computing.help.inf.ed.ac.uk/help-desk

If you’re an undergraduate student you can chat online. You’ll find them in Teams – just click Chat then search for infhelp. We’re there from 10:30 to 12:30, Monday to Friday. If we can’t answer your question right away, we’ll ask you to create a support ticket using the Computing Support Form.

General

Some students feel that Academic responses to Piazza questions are sometimes quite rude in their replies and discourages students to ask questions.

*Action Neil*

Students complained that some lecture recordings are cutting off before the actual lecture has finished, Neil and Iain Murray have sent out an email to all Teaching Staff explaining the start and end times of lectures and staff should stick to these specific times.

Some recorded lectures are not being released until 24 hours after the event.

*Action Neil*

Is it possible to have subtitles with better captioning available on live and recorded lectures especially for International students?

We are investigating available and recommended tools for auto-captioning.

If there are any queries regarding Tuition Fees, information can be found here:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/tuition-fees

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