Student course feedback

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 2022/23, and covers 67 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 1,100 individual responses 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 2022/23 there were nine responses removed for offensive language, and fourteen 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	2023/24 Lecturer	2022/23 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Informatics 2C - Introduction to Computer Systems	Grot (new) / Patel (new)	report (Nagarajan / Grosser / Steuwer)
Informatics 2 - Software Engineering and Professional Practice	Alexandru / Glienecke	report (Alexandru / Glienecke)
Informatics 2 - Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures	Longley / Filos-Ratsikas (new)	report (Cryan / Longley)
Informatics 2 - Foundations of Data Science	Sterratt / Gal / Gutmann (new)	report (Sterratt / Gal)
Informatics 2D - Reasoning and Agents	Lascarides / Kokciyan / Robertson (new)	report (Lascarides / Kokciyan)	2022-23 Response - INF2D (30.59 KB PDF)
Discrete Mathematics and Probability	Stark / Heunen / van Glabbeek (new)	report (Yorsten / Stark / Heunen)

Year 3 courses (Level 9)

Year 3/4 courses (Level 10)

Course Name	2023/24 Lecturer	2022/23 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Compiling Techniques	Grosser / Shaikhha (new)	report (Grosser / Steuwer)
Computer Architecture and Design	Topham	report (Topham)
Computer Communications and Networks	Honda / Patras (new)	report (Honda / Marina)
Computational Cognitive Science	Mollica (new)	report (Lucas)
Computer Security	Arapinis / Elahi	report (Arapinis / Elahi / Mayr)
Computing in the Classroom	Robertson	report (Robertson)	2022-23 Response - CiC (22.97 KB PDF)
Elements of Programming Languages	Cheney	report (Cheney)	2022-23 Response - EPL (31.37 KB PDF)
Honours Project (Informatics)	Shimodaira (new)	report (Narayanaswamy )
Introduction to Databases	Guagliardo / Kadnikov (new)	report (Guagliardo / Libkin)
Introduction to Mobile Robotics	Lu	report (Lu)
Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science	O'Connor	report (O'Connor)
Machine Learning	Tang / Shimodaira / Nazarpour	report (Tang / Shimodaira / Nazarpour)
Operating Systems	Barbalace / Mai	report (Barbalace / Mai)	2022-23 Response - OS (36.8 KB PDF)
Professional Issues	Garforth	report (Garforth)
Software Design and Modelling	Stevens / Ikonomov (new)	report (Stevens)	2022-23 Response - SDM (39.08 KB PDF)
Software Testing	Anderson	report (Anderson)

Year 4/5/MSc courses (Level 11)

Course Name	2023/24 Lecturer	2022/23 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Advanced Database Systems	Nikolic / Pieris	report (Nikolic / Pieris)
Advanced Robotics	Tonneau / Ramamoorthy	report (Tonneau / Ramamoorthy)
Algorithmic Game Theory and its Applications	Etessami	report (Etessami)
Automatic Speech Recognition	Bell / Tang	report (Bell / Tang)
Bioinformatics 1	Simpson	report (Simpson)
Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers	Wallden (new) / Ciampi (new) / Karakostas	report (Karakostas)
Computer Graphics	NOT RUNNING IN 2023/24	report (Vaxman)
Extreme Computing	Mai / Shaikhha	report (Mai / Shaikhha)
Human-Computer Interaction	Vaniea / Vines	report (Vines / Wolters)
Introduction to Modern Cryptography	Ciampi	report (Ciampi)	2022-23 Response - IMC (30.7 KB PDF)
Introduction to Quantum Computing	Garcia-Patron Sanchez / Wallden	report (Garcia-Patron Sanchez / Wallden)
Machine Learning Practical	Bilen / Andreadis	report (Bilen / Andreadis)
Machine Learning Theory	Sarkar	report (Sarkar)
Natural Computing	Herrmann	report (Herrmann)
Natural Language Understanding, Generation, and Machine Translation	Birch-Mayne / Cohen (new)  / Minervini (new)	report (Keller / Birch-Mayne)
Principles and Design of IoT Systems	Arvind	report (Arvind)
Quantum Cyber Security	Wallden	report (Garcia-Patron Sanchez / Wallden)
Secure Programming	Aspinall	report (Aspinall)
Security Engineering	Patel / Anderson	report (Patel / Anderson)
Text Technologies for Data Science	Ross / Al Hariri (new)	report (Magdy / Ross)
Types and Semantics for Programming Languages	Wadler	report (Wadler)
Usable Security and Privacy	Vaniea (new)	report (Jenkins)

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	2023/24 Lecturer	2022/23 Feedback	Lecturer Response
Accelerated Natural Language Processing	Lopez / Ponti / Cohen (new)	report (Goldwater / Lopez / Ponti)
Applied Machine Learning	Mac Aodha / Narayanaswamy	report (Mac Aodha / Narayanaswamy)	2022-23 Response - AML (113.82 KB PDF)
Categories and Quantum Informatics	NOT RUNNING IN 23/24	report (Heunen)	2022-23 Response - CQI (43.31 KB PDF)
Case Studies in AI Ethics	Kokciyan	report (Kokciyan)
Case Studies in Design Informatics 1	Vines / Lechelt	report (Vines / Wolters / Lechelt)
Categories and Quantum Informatics	NOT RUNNING IN 2023/24	report (Heunen)
Computational Neuroscience	Chadwick	report (Chadwick)
Image and Vision Computing	Li (new) / Sevilla-Lara	report (Sevilla-Lara)
Informatics Project Proposal	Constantin / Armstrong	report (Constantin / Armstrong)
Introduction to Practical Programming with Objects	NOT RUNNING IN 2023/24	report (Franke / Glienecke / Symons )
Introductory Applied Machine Learning (Semester 2)	(Ma / Shimodaira)	report (Ma / Shimodaira)
Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition	Onken / Vergari	report (Onken / Murray / Vergari)	2022-23 Response - MLPR (17.87 KB PDF)
Methods for Causal Inference	Khamesh	report (Khamesh)
Probabilistic Modelling and Reasoning	Gutmann / Williams (new)	report (Gutmann)
Reinforcement Learning	Albrecht / Herrmann (new)	report (Albrecht)
Seminar in Cognitive Modelling	Mollica	report (Mollica / Bramley)