Student feedback

Anonymous feedback was collected from the studens at the end of the last session using a new, generic feedback questionnaire of the department. The instructions are the following: "Please reply on the scale of 1-5 to queries 1-4 and 6 (1 = 'disagree completely, very low'), 5 = 'agree completely, very high'). Reply to query 5 with the number of hours, and write free text in reply to query 7." Here is a brief summary of the feedback.

1. The learning objectives of the course were clear to me from the start ('I knew what I was supposed to learn. Average: 4,0; range: 3-5

2. The learning material used during the course (such as exercises, lecture material, literature) supported my reaching the learning objectives. Average 3,9; range 3-5

3. The course activities (such as scheduling, instruction, other teaching) supported my reaching the learning objectives. Average: 4,3; range 4-5

4. The assessment of the course (such as exercises, exams, distribution of points) measured the attainment of the primary learning objectives. Average 3,7; range 3-4

5. The amount of time I used during the course:

• attending lectures (h per wk): Average 4,6; range 2-6 hours per week
• on exercises / tutoring (h per wk): Average 5,0; range 2-20 hours per week
• on independent work (h per wk): Average 9,9; range 4-24 hours per week
• (total per student: 19,5; range 11-33 hours per week)

6. As a whole, I give the course the following grade: Average 3,9; range 3-4

7. Give your comments on the course activities, contents, teacher and instructor activities, usefulness, meaningfulness, relevance, level of difficulty, suggestions for improvement, criticism, thanks.

Representative selected comments:

• Comments on the problem-based approach: The way of working we used through this course has been really interesting, and I think combining a bit of theory at class with a lot of team and personal work has helped us all develop the skills we were supposed to obtain much better and more permanently than if we had followed a traditional method (study+exam). -- The teaching method is interesting and open. It provides more communication between students. The group assignment is also interesting. These real datasets are attractive for us to mining patterns.
• Comments on the workload: The loading of exercises at the end is quite heavy. However, it is worthy to discover the solution by ourselves. -- Some implementation are quite time consuming, maybe more time should be given. -- It would have been nice to have different time windows for different problems. It seemed to be too easy in the beginning and hard in the end.
  
• Suggestions for better organization: It might be good to have some kind of division of groups based on this programming language preferences. -- Maybe more lecture about the material on the book could be given. -- The description of problems was perhaps a bit too abstract - it would have been nice to have a more concrete approach or directions.
• Some issues were reported with communication, language problems and cultural differences. The teacher and instructor also received some praise.

Student feedback during the course

The learning journals, delivered in five pieces during the course, provided a rich view to individual feelings. In addition to what was commented above, two components of the course were widely liked: the mini tests in the middle of each problem, and the lectures-on-demand. Especially at the end of the course, the journals contained -- as wished for by the teacher -- lots of comments and suggestions. One important suggestions that is not covered above was to improve group work skills before actual group work: Maybe it would be nice to have some group building exercises before real action. -- I think that the future improvement to the course would be how to encourage group members to work better.

In a similar way, the five group reports provided also information on how groups worked. Most if not all groups honestly also reported some issues in group dynamics. It seems, however, that a vast majority of the students who took the course by active participation also valued the team activity.

Feedback from the teacher

This has been an interesting experience for me, too, as this was the first time I delivered a course so strongly based on active learing of the students. I have been positively surprised by the activity of groups, their independence, and their willingness (eagerness) to reach outside the course material and even outside learning objectives! I have been impressed by a number of achievements of the groups. However, at times I have been wondering if and how the core learning objectives will be met, given that students have a large degree of freedom in their work.

The working method stressed the independence and activity of students and student groups. It was interesting to note how this seemed to actually raise the interest and motivation for both exercises ("mini tests") and (unprepared) lectures ("on demand"). This was most motivating also for the teacher: at the best moments I felt that the students were sucking information faster than I could provide it. On the other hand, as the students probably know, I was slightly disappointed by the low activity and interation in the class room.

Overall, my impression is that students in this course have learned much more than they would have had in a normal course, and that the learning is much more permanent. However, coverage of the material and theory is not as systematic as in a normal lecture course, but I am not worried about that. A large number of students who had registered to the course never showed up, and some dropped out early in the course. It is clear that this kind of working method is not to everybody's liking -- but neither are traditional lecture courses.

I would like to thank the students for their feedback and suggestions. I will try to address the issues mentioned above in the course of 2012. In particular, the structure and schedule of the problems should be improved based on the experiences from this course.

An aspect I think should be changed is to have more active supervision/mentoring of the groups. In this course the groups worked quite independently -- which was sometimes impressive -- but at the same time a lot of potential for guidance and learning was left unused.