97.46 Teaching Quality Assessment

Mr Wallace summarised the activities involved in the Teaching Quality Assessment and described the outcome. He thanked the students for their support during this exercise.

97.45 Engineering at Cambridge : A Freshers Guide

Ms Galletly and Ms West offered to revise the guide together.

Mr Counsell suggested that daily, short lectures, perhaps presented on video, might provide valuable motivation. Some people considered that it might be difficult to get students to attend something as short as a 10 minute presentation. It was suggested that another way of providing motivation might be to encourage the inclusion of more practical examples in the rest of the lectures. It was agreed that the list of applications lectures titles should be publicised on the web.

Dr Brunton explained that although there is no possibility, at present, for students to do part of their study abroad, the Department is currently trying to find ways of enabling this type of activity. The Faculty of Law have recently developed some activity of this sort and this may make it easier for Engineering to develop in this area.

Mr Todd suggested that it would be better to address environmental issues as an integral part of the course structure rather than have them included in "bolt-on" type activities like applications lectures. It was suggested that it might be possible to make a coherent and linked presentation of environmental issues through a number of applications lectures.

Mr Todd and Mr Counsell will draft a paper outlining the possibilities that exist in the course for expanding the treatment of environmental issues.

Mr Low explained that the lack of an undergraduate common room was particularly inconvenient for 4^th year students. Dr Prager said that the Department was still very willing to improve the public areas for students. Everyone agreed to try to think of suitable areas which might be developed to provide improved facilities, and to devise ways of improving the Inglis foyer.

It was suggested that the possibility of inviting a sandwich van to come and sell by the fountain should be investigated. This could provide a source of higher quality coffee. The last time we invited a sandwich van to sell on site they were not keen to do this.

It was requested that an additional Coke machine be installed in the Baker building.

This has been improved recently.

This is currently under discussion. At present the issue of safety is the main objection. Mr Wallace will report back when this has been considered further.

Dr Prager described the recent improvements and it was generally accepted that the facilities had been working better this term.

Dr Brunton explained that a candidate who obtains a clear "First" class performance in both the modules and the project may be awarded a distinction by the examiners. He said that the Faculty Board provides guidelines to the examiners but each board of examiners is responsible for making detailed decisions for themselves in order to make them as fair as possible in the circumstances.

Dr Brunton explained that external examiners reports are written to the Vice-Chancellor and are considered to be confidential. The Faculty Board recently decided that matters of concern to candidates will be referred to the SSJC.

The internal examiners reports are written for the benefit of the Subject Groups and for the examiners in the following year. If in future these reports were to be public documents, then this would need the approval of the Faculty Board.

Examiners will be asked to make helpful comments in the crib to enable students in future years to see what lessons had been learnt through each question.

Mr Low said that there were quite a large number of errors in the cribs. It would be a help to have a procedure for correcting errors in exam cribs. This might be best provided as a list on a web page.

Some of the 4^th year modules do not produce cribs particularly quickly after the exams. It was suggested that students should talk to the lecturers in charge of leading each module directly.

It was explained that we try each year to minimise the number of module clashes that prevent students from taking the combinations that they want to.

There will be no intermediate feedback on 4^th Year EasterTerm exams before the final results are released.

Mr Ang said that several of the 4^th Year modules failed to run the examples classes that they should. The Secretary will pass the relevant information on to the review committee of the 4^th Year.

In some cases the syllabus and the booklist do not reflect what is taught in the course. If anyone is aware of major errors, the Teaching Office would be grateful for information. [Please note, after recent substantial amendments, the Web reflects the most up-to-date versions.]

Dr Prager offered to photocopy publicity material if required.

We will try to put the SSJC Minutes on the web.