TC Agenda 13th March 2019

Teaching Committee Agenda for 13th March 2019.

Meeting Agenda

Informatics Teaching Committee Agenda

14.00hrs, Appleton Tower room 7.14

 

Agenda

19.39 Apologies for absence: Aurora Constantin, Paul Anderson, Qais Patankar, Richard Shillcock.

19.40 Minutes of Previous Meetings

19.41 Matters Arising

18.29-01 – Software Options for Coursework Submission. DoLT has contacted the RAT unit and Learning Technologist to consider options.

ACTION: RAT-unit to report on investigations for next TC.

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18.59-02: Course Moderation Guidelines.

ACTION: The DoLT is to contact the Convenors on this.

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18.60-02: Learning Technologist to produce an overview for the LEARN template.

ACTION: Learning Technologist to run focus groups with students and to look at the staff engagement with LEARN for TC. Once the questionnaire results come back Alex will bring the results to TC. ONGOING.

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19.06 Proposal to limit MSc project Report Lengths, S.Goldwater.

ACTION 1: Convenor to speak to the Design Informatics Dissertation coordinator.

ACTION 2: Masters Dissertation coordinator to report on progress.

RESPONSE: MSc course pages updated:

http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/diss/guide.html#Dissertation

http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/diss/faqstudent.html

All MSc students and all MSc supervisors notified by email about the thesis format.

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19.26 Mandatory Unconscious Bias Training for Tutors/Demonstrators - Head of Informatics Student Support / Equality and Diversity Officer

E&D Officer to investigate training options, and liaise with Cristina Alexandru / Vicky MacTaggart / Alexandra Welsh regarding the online training requirement. All concerned have been contacted and will deal with this in the summer to have it in place for Semester 1 of 2019-20. ONGOING.

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19.27 Exam Marking Policy - Director of Learning and Teaching

ACTION: DoLT to provide a full policy document.

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19.28  Student Surveys - Feedback Officer.

ACTION: DoLT to consult with ITO and to publish what we do.

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19.35 Hons/MInf projects - minor modifications - Honours/MInf Project co-ordinator

ACTION: Honours/MInf Project co-ordinator to investigate the best options for paperless submission.

RESPONSE from Project co-ordinator: Instructions for students have been altered to say that hardcopy submission is not required. Tim Colles is working on the project report/data submission mechanism, for use for April submission of UG4/MInf projects. It will be possible to upload the project data separately from the project report, provided a checksum of the data is submitted with the report to ensure that changes are not made after the submission deadline. The same mechanism will be available for use with MSc projects.

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19.36 Recruitment Report - Recruitment Officer

ACTION: K.Vaniea to discuss Cyber-Security numbers with Head of school and Head of Professional Services ASAP. 

RESPONSE: The conclusion of the discussion was that that the number of Cyber Security MSc students cannot be changed and so fifty students are expected, a problem as the course was designed for thirty. K.Vaniea is working on how to adress this. ONGOING.

ACTION: ITO & DoLT to send AI & DS information to applicants via Dotmailer. RESPONSE: Document created and delivered to InfComms for action in April after application deadline. COMPLETE.

ACTION: Convenor to locate a staff member to provide Cognitive Science information.

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19.37 Peer Observation of Teaching - ITO and Director of Quality.

This document  has been approved and uploaded here:  https://web.inf.ed.ac.uk/infweb/student-services/ito/staff/peer-observation-teaching

ACTION: DoLT to contact IAD with view to holding Teaching Lunch.

19.42 Preliminary Exam Marks - I.Murray

19.43 INF1-CG Essay Extensions - R.Shillcock

In INF1-CG (Cognitive Science) we are piloting an innovation in the teaching-learning-support infrastructure, assisted by EFI and the Blockchain Technology Laboratory.

We have instituted a local digital currency and trading scheme, underwritten by blockchain technology, which allows all the students in the class to trade academic and non-academic use-values, such as peer mentoring, proof-reading, revision quizzes, social activities, goods of any kind, and so on.

The goal is to amplify peer interaction and to incentivize students to do the things we want them to do?and a lot more? and to embed the course more fully in the ?student experience?. It is a way to generalize narrow schemes such as InfPALS. It is a response to the question - what do students want/need?

We would like these first-year students to be able to ?buy? an essay extension in the digital currency. Their capacity to do so reflects their engagement with the course; if they have engaged proactively with the course it gives them the opportunity to reschedule the essay writing accordingly. It gives the students more agency.

The number and extent of extensions would be discussed with the markers.

19.44  Student Administration & Support - Service Excellence (for information)

19.45 Recruitment Report Recruitment Officer

  Total Offers Conditional Offer (C) Conditional Firm (CF) Unconditional offer  (U) Unconditional Firm (UF)
All programmes 77 4 54 1 18
MSc AI 21 0 14 0 7
MSc Comp Sci 8 2 4 0 2
MSc Cog Sci 1 0 0 0 1
MSc Cyber Sec  0        
MSc Data Sci 6 0 4 0 2
MSc Informatics 3 0 1 0 2
MSc Design Inf 24 2 19 0 3
MSc Adv. Design Inf 14 0 12 1 1

 

19.46 Date of next Teaching Committee - Wed 10th April 2019

19.47 AOCB