B59EH Mechanical Engineering Science 8 Questionnaire summary

Thanks for filling in this form, and particular thanks to those who made comments we found these very helpful. We received
105 returns and have tried to summarise them in the following. Not all students answered all of the questions and some answered
equivocally (i.e. between Yes and No), in which case we put a tick in each box, which some of you did anyway. Generally,
there was quite a lot of equivocation in some questions, so the total is often greater than 105. You can compare the response with
last years survey yourselves, but we have tried to do this in the summary.
We have summarised the tenor of the comments per section along with a summary of if and how we intend to take your comments
forward. At the end, we have given you a summary of student performance this year, compared with previous years.
Some of you made suggestions and / or comments about our respective styles, some positive, some negative. We have each read
these comments carefully and will use them to inform our personal teaching.
DY/RLR June 2014

PART 1: About the teaching

1. Did we explain things well?
Y
84

N
26

76% positive. This is a lot less positive than last year. There were a few positive comments, but over 20 of you
were concerned about the pace, level of difficulty and level of explanation in control. There were a similar number
of non-specific comments about explanation.

2. Could you understand what we were saying?

Y
95

N
12

89% positive a bit less than last year. There were fewer comments than for Q1, although some referred to their
comments above.

3. Did we manage to keep your attention?

Y
81

N
31

72% positive. This is a bit worse than last year but about the same as the year before last. Comments were
heterogeneous and reflected your personal preferences for the various devices we use to keep you (and ourselves)
awake. The commonest problem identified was attention wandering when some dense material had to be covered
(as it inevitably will at this level), although a few also found lecture times and lack of breaks wearing. Suggestions
included having less reliance on unremitting slides, especially only ones with equations on them and more class
interaction, although we will probably not use gaps in the notes as some suggested thats for second years
youre all growed up now!

4. Were we enthusiastic?
Y
96

N
12

89 % positive, a fair bit less positive than last year, although the majority of the comments were positive.

5. Use the space below for free comment on issues that you think might help our teaching.
Most of the comments in this section (not covered above) were about worked examples many, although not all, about trying to make
the control examples more relevant to real world problems.

PART 2: About the organisation

6. Were you told about the schedule, and did it work acceptably?
Tick one box

Y
100

N
5

95% positive, a little better than last year.

7. Were you told about deadlines in advance?

Tick one box

Y
103

N
2

98% positive, about the same as last year.

8. Did we allocate enough time for lectures/tutorials/presentations?

Tick one box

Y
94

N
10

90% positive, almost the same as last year.

PART 3: About the support

9. Did we give you feedback on your understanding? (Please note that feedback can include questions and
answers in lectures, going over tutorial questions and worked examples, as well as formal, written comments and interim
marks)
59% positive, miles worse than last year. This response was dominated by the fact that one of us did not manage to
Y
N
mark the assignments in a timely fashion, which we regret.

61

43

10. Did the feedback come in time to be of use to you?

Y
43

N
65

40% positive, quite the worst response we have had to any question in the history of this survey. See above.

11. Did we give you enough opportunities to ask questions?

Y
100

N
7

93% positive, about the same as last year.

12. Did we help you to understand things when asked?

Y
97

N
7

93% positive, the same as last year.

14. Use the space below for free comment on issues that you think might help us to support
students better at your level.

PART 4: About the module

15. Did the course content and assessments stimulate you to think about the subject?
Tick one box

Y
83

N
22

79% positive, quite a bit worse than last year.

16. Was it a) easy; b) challenging but surmountable; c) too difficult

Tick one box
a)
2

b)
84

c)
20

19% thought the course too difficult, which is quite a bit higher than previous years, this despite the fact that you
have done better than ever.

17. On average, how many hours per week have you spent (including in-class time) on this course
(i.e. B59EH)?
Tick one box

Less than 2 2

2-5 21

5-8 53

8-12 21

More than 12 6

This distribution is about what we expect with the mode at about 8 hours.

18. On average, what proportion of the scheduled sessions have you attended?
Tick one box

Less than half

Between half and three quarters

Most of them

9%

32%

63%

These figures reflect about the same level of engagement as last year.

19. If you attendance was low, was it because:

Tick one box

You had too many other things to

do 34

You can manage OK without lectures

and tutorials 17

Other (please explain) 3

This question is aimed at assessing if students were cutting corners though choice or necessity (seems like the latter, as it was last year).

20. Do you consider the assessment to be appropriate and fair?

Y
95

N
7

93% positive, quite a bit better than previous years.

21. Was the module relevant and coherent with the rest of your study?
Tick one box

Y
96

N
6

94% positive, about the same as last year.

22. Are you generally satisfied with the module? Use the comment space for anything not already
covered that you think might help us improve the module.
86% positive, a fair bit worse than years. Comments were, as usual, very wide-ranging and often contradictory
Y
N
(e.g. some students liked the projects and some didnt). Unlike some other years, there was no big issue so, for
84
14
the moment, we will not make any major adjustments. We again justify this on the basis of your excellent overall
performance this year (see below).

We are very pleased (as we hope you are) with the performance this year. We will, of course, make a few adjustments in
response to this years feedback, but we think that the course is now working quite well.
The course has been running in its current form for five years and the bar chart below shows the student performance profile for the
five years, including your own. Prior to this, the control part was examined conventionally (i.e with a traditional examination and an
element from laboratories) and the MoM was examined in essentially the current form. This led to much more work for the students,
and rather poorer student performance, which was why we opted to harmonise the assessment. The year before last, in response to a
declining performance and the assertion by the students that the weighting was unfair, we reduced the proportion of continuous
assessment in the Control part of the module and reduced the proportion of the MoM part of the module that is covered in the EoC test.
We kept the weighting of the module overall the same, i.e. 50% Control and 50% MoM. This year, again in response to student
comment, we did away with the measurement part of the project, which allowed a bit more time for preparation for the final test, which
seems to have paid off for you.