2020/21

Reports from student surveys and lecturer responses

This page presents feedback from students about their experience on Informatics courses, to help future students in their course choices. There are also responses from the lecturers. Please note that lecturers regularly revise course content and presentation from year to year — often directly in response to exactly this feedback.

Do not redistribute or reuse this material without permission. If you would like another format or want to use it in your own publication then please contact the Informatics Teaching Organisation.

Feedback reports

The most recent feedback is from 2020/21, and covers 55 courses at all levels in the School of Informatics. Please note that not all courses run every year and course content changes from year to year. See the Course Index for current details of all courses offered.  

The tables below bring together over 1,500 individual submissions from students, gathered through an online survey at the end of semester 1 and semester 2. Each course lecturer has been invited to write a response, and these are linked alongside the student feedback.

The published reports contain free-text responses by students about their experience of each course and recommendations to others planning their studies. Each course organiser receives this report as well as statistics on multiple-choice responses. All these reports, together with student feedback about individual members of teaching staff, are collected and sent to the Director of Teaching.

Please note that these are personal responses from individual students: some courses have a low response rate, and a small sample can be unrepresentative. Some courses do not appear because there were no responses from students. To find out more about each course yourself, go to the index at http://course.inf.ed.ac.uk and browse the current course web pages.

Each year we remove responses that contain offensive language or otherwise breach the University Dignity and Respect policy. In 2020/21 there were nine responses removed for offensive language, and 22 responses edited to remove personally identifying details. 

Notes on the tables

The word (new) after a lecturer name indicates a change in the staff teaching a course.

Courses are grouped by year taken. Note that many honours courses may be taken in a choice of years: these are listed as Year 3/4 or Year 4/5/MSc as appropriate.

Viewing each feedback report requires DICE authentication: you must have an School of Informatics user account to log in and download these.

Year 1 courses (Level 8)

Year 2 courses (Level 8)

Course Name	2021/22 Lecturer	2020/21 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Informatics 2C - Introduction to Computer Systems	Grot / Grosser / Ainsworth (new) / Nagarajan (new)	report (Grot / Grosser / Smith)
Informatics 2 - Software Engineering and Professional Practice	Alexandru / Constantin (new)	report(Alexandru / Anderson / Garforth)
Informatics 2 - Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures	Cryan / Longley	report (Cryan / Longley / Kalorkoti)
Informatics 2 - Foundations of Data Science	Sterratt / Gal	report (Sterratt / Gal)
Informatics 2D - Reasoning and Agents	Lascarides / Papapanagiotou (new)	report (Lascarides / Chirita)	2020/21 Response - INF2D (64.85 KB PDF)
Discrete Mathematics and Probability	Velichkov / Yorsten / Stark (new)	report (Velichkov / Yorsten)

Year 3 courses (Level 9)

Course Name	2021/22 Lecturer	2020/21 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Informatics Large Practical	Gilmore / Jackson	report (Gilmore / Jackson)	2020/21 Response - ILP (67.97 KB PDF)
System Design Project	Tonneau / Garforth	report (Tonneau / Garforth / Webb)	2020/21 Response - SDP (70.6 KB PDF)
Introduction to Vision and Robotics	Lu (new)	report (Khadem) report (Distance Learning) (Khadem)	2020/21 Response - IVR (52.13 KB PDF)

Year 3/4 courses (Level 10)

Course Name	2021/22 Lecturer	2020/21 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Computer Security	Arapinis / Elahi / Velichkov (new)	report (Arapinis / Elahi / Kohlweiss)
Honours Project (Informatics)	Webb	report (Webb)
Introduction to Databases	Guagliardo / Cao (new)	report (Guagliardo / Libkin / Pieris)
Introductory Applied Machine Learning (UG)	Mac Aodha / Shimodaira /  Narayanaswamy (new) / Nazarpour (new)	report (Mac Aodha / Williams / Shimodaira)	2020/21 Response - IAML (UG) (79.03 KB PDF)
MInf Project (Part 1)	Webb	report (Webb)
Operating Systems	Barbalace / Steuwer	report (Barbalace / Mai / Spink / Steuwer)

Year 4/5/MSc courses (Level 11)

Course Name	2021/22 Lecturer	2020/21 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Advanced Database Systems	Nikolic / Pieris	report (Nikolic / Pieris)
Algorithmic Game Theory and its Applications	Etessami	report (Etessami / Guo)
Automatic Speech Recognition	Bell / Tang (new)	report (Bell / Renals)
Bioinformatics 1	Simpson / Goryanin (new)	report (Simpson / Armstrong)
Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers	Kiayias	report (Kiayias)
Computational Complexity	NOT RUNNING IN 2021/22	report (Guo / Etessami)
Human-Computer Interaction	Vaniea / Vines (new)	report (Vaniea / Constantin)
Internet of Things Systems Security and the Cloud (IoTSSC)	NOT RUNNING IN 2021/22	report (Patras / Aspinall)
Introduction to Modern Cryptography	Ciampi (new) / Zacharias	report (Wallden / Zacharias /  Velichkov)	2020/21 Response - IMC (54.39 KB PDF)
Machine Learning Practical	Bilen / Andreadis / Ramamoorthy	report (Bilen / Andreadis / Ramamoorthy)	2020/21 Response - MLP (65.62 KB PDF)
MInf Project (Part 2)	Webb	report (Webb)
Natural Language Understanding, Generation, and Machine Translation	Keller / Birch-Mayne	report (Keller / Lapata / Birch-Mayne)	2020/21 Response - NLU+ (58.6 KB PDF)
Principles and Design of IoT Systems	Arvind	report (Arvind)
Text Technologies for Data Science	Magdy / Ross (new)	report (Magdy)
The Human Factor: Working With Users	Wolters / Vaniea (new)	report (Wolters / Bach)

Year 5/MSc courses

Most MSc study is at Level 11. However, MSc students may take up to 30 credit points of Level 9 and Level 10 courses. Those are listed in the sections above for Year 3 and Year 4.

Course Name	2021/22 Lecturer	2020/21 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Accelerated Natural Language Processing	(Goldwater / Cohen)	report (Goldwater / Cohen)
Case Studies in Design Informatics 1	Vines (new) / Wolters	report (Wolters / Lee / Vaniea)
Case Studies in Design Informatics 2	Lee / Wolters	report (Lee / Wolters)
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience	Series / Chadwick	report (Series (Chadwick)
Data-driven Business and Behaviour Analytics	Restocchi	report (Restocchi / Sarker / Ross)
Data Mining and Exploration	NOT RUNNING IN 2021/22	report (Gutmann / Narayanaswamy / Renals)
Doing Research in Natural Language Processing	Keller / Tang	report (Keller / Tang / Angelidis)
Group Research Project (Biomedical AI)	Oyarzun	report (Oyarzun)
Image and Vision Computing	Sevilla-Lara (new)	report (Fisher / Hospedales)
Individual Project in Advanced Natural Language Processing	Tang	report (Keller / Tang)
Individual Research Project (Biomedical AI)	Oyarzun	report (Oyarzun / Simpson)	2020/21 Response - BAI-IP (96.31 KB PDF)
Informatics Project Proposal	Constantin / Sannella (new) Sannella (new)	report (Constantin / Anderson) report (Distance Learning) (Constantin)
Introduction to Practical Programming with Objects	Franke (new) / Glienecke (new) / Symons (new) Franke (new) / Glienecke (new) / Symons (new)	report (Anderson) report (Distance Learning) (Anderson)
Introductory Applied Machine Learning (PG)	Mac Aodha / Shimodaira /  Narayanaswamy (new) / Nazarpour (new)	report (Mac Aodha / Williams / Shimodaira)	2020/21 Response - IAML (PG) (79.03 KB PDF)
Introductory Applied Machine Learning (Semester 2)	(Ma / Shimodaira)	report (Ma / Shimodaira)
Issues in Clinical Data Modelling	Weisse	report (Weisse / Simpson / Oyarzun)
Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition	Murray / Onken	report (Murray / Onken)	2020/21 Response - MLPR (75.39 KB PDF)
Reinforcement Learning	Albrecht / Andreadis	report (Albrecht / Andreadis / Herrmann)
Research Methods in Security, Privacy, and Trust	Aspinall / Elahi / Kiayias	report (Aspinall / Elahi  / Kiayias)