Student course feedback

To help our students make decisions about their course choice, we publish recent results of the end-of-course student surveys.

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 2021/22, and covers 70 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 600 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 2020/21 there were three responses removed for offensive language, and ten 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)

Course Name 2022/23 Lecturer 2021/22 Feedback Lecturer Response
Informatics 1 - Introduction to Computation Bradfield / Sannela (new) report (Bradfield  / Wadler)  
Informatics 1 - Cognitive Science Mollica / Lucas  / Storkey (new) report (Hennig / Lucas / Mollica)  
Informatics 1 - Object Oriented Programming McNeill  report (McNeill / Symons)

 

Year 2 courses (Level 8)

Course Name 2022/23 Lecturer 2021/22 Feedback Lecturer Response
Informatics 2C - Introduction to Computer Systems Nagarajan / Grosser / Steuwer (new) report (Grot / Grosser / Ainsworth / Nagarajan)  
Informatics 2 - Software Engineering and Professional Practice Alexandru / Glienecke (new) report (Alexandru / Constantin)  
Informatics 2 - Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures Cryan / Longley report (Cryan / Longley)  
Informatics 2 - Foundations of Data Science Sterratt / Gal / Kokciyan (new) report (Sterratt / Gal)  
Informatics 2D - Reasoning and Agents Lascarides report (Lascarides / Papapanagiotou)
Discrete Mathematics and Probability Yorsten / Stark / Heunen (new) report (Velichkov / Yorsten / Stark)  

Year 3 courses (Level 9)

Course Name 2022/23 Lecturer 2021/22 Feedback Lecturer Response
Automated Reasoning Fleuriot report (Fleuriot)  
Informatics Large Practical Gilmore / Glienecke (new) report (Gilmore / Jackson)  
System Design Project Garforth / Polgreen (new)

report (Tonneau / Garforth)

Introduction to Vision and Robotics NOT RUNNING IN 2022/23 report (Lu)  

Year 3/4 courses (Level 10)

Course Name 2022/23 Lecturer 2021/23 Feedback Lecturer Response
Algorithms and Data Structures Mayr report (Mayr)  
Compiling Techniques Grosser / Steuwer report (Grosser / Steuwer)
Computer Architecture and Design Topham report (Topham)
Computer Communications and Networks Honda / Marina report (Honda / Marina)  
Computational Cognitive Science Lucas report (Lucas)  
Computer Security Arapinis / Elahi / Mayr (new) report (Arapinis / Elahi / Velichkov)  
Computing in the Classroom Robertson report (Robertson / Farrell)  
Foundations of Natural Language Processing Thompson / Lascarides / Titov report (Thompson / Lascarides / Titov)
Honours Project (Informatics) Narayanaswamy (new) report (Webb)  
Introduction to Databases Guagliardo / Libkin (new) report (Guagliardo / Cao)  
Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science O'Connor report (Bradfield / O'Connor)  
Introductory Applied Machine Learning (UG / PG) NOT RUNNING In 2022/23 report (Mac Aodha / Shimodaira /  Narayanaswamy / Nazarpour)
Operating Systems Barbalace / Mai (new) report (Barbalace / Steuwer)  
Professional Issues Garforth report (Garforth)  
Software Testing Anderson (new) report (Rajan)  

Year 4/5/MSc courses (Level 11)

Course Name 2022/23 Lecturer 2021/22 Feedback Lecturer Response
Advanced Database Systems Nikolic / Pieris report (Nikolic / Pieris)  
Advanced Vision NOT RUNNING IN 2022/23 report (Sevilla-Lara)  
Algorithmic Game Theory and its Applications Etessami report (Etessami / Guo)  
Automatic Speech Recognition Bell / Tang (new) report (Bell / Tang)  
Bioinformatics 1 Simpson report (Simpson / Goryanin)
Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers Karakostas report (Karakostas)  
Computer Graphics Subr report (Subr)  
Extreme Computing Mai / Shaikhha report (Mai / Shaikhha)  
Formal Verification NOT RUNNING IN 2022/23 report (Polgreen / Jackson)  
Human-Computer Interaction Wolters (new) / Vines  report (Vaniea / Vines)  
Introduction to Modern Cryptography Ciampi  report (Ciampi / Zacharias)  
Machine Learning Practical Bilen / Andreadis  report (Bilen / Andreadis / Ramamoorthy)  
Machine Learning Theory Sarkar report (Sarkar)
MInf Project (Part 2) Narayanaswamy (new) report (Webb)  
Natural Computing Herrmann report (Herrmann)  
Natural Language Understanding, Generation, and Machine Translation Birch-Mayne / Keller report (Keller / Birch-Mayne)  
Parallel Architectures NOT RUNNING IN 2022/23 report (Nagarajan)  
Parallel Programming Languages and Systems Cole report (Cole)
Principles and Design of IoT Systems Arvind report (Arvind)  
Quantum Cyber Security Garcia-Patron Sanchez / Wallden report (Garcia-Patron Sanchez / Wallden)  
Secure Programming Aspinall (new) report (Arnaboldi)  
Security Engineering Anderson report (Ainsworth / Anderson)  
Text Technologies for Data Science Magdy / Ross  report (Magdy / Ross)  

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 2022/23 Lecturer 2021/23 Feedback Lecturer Response
Accelerated Natural Language Processing Goldwater / Lopez (new) / Ponti (new) report (Goldwater / Cohen)
Categories and Quantum Informatics Heunen report (Heunen)
Case Studies in AI Ethics Kokciyan report (Kokciyan) 
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Series  report (Series / Chadwick)  
Data-driven Business and Behaviour Analytics Restocchi report (Restocchi / Sarker / Ross)  
Doing Research in Natural Language Processing Keller / Tang report (Keller / Tang)  
Group Research Project (Biomedical AI) Oyarzun report (Oyarzun)  
Image and Vision Computing Sevilla-Lara  report (Sevilla-Lara)  
Informatics Research Review Constantin report (Armstrong / Constantin)  
Informatics Project Proposal

Constantin / Armstrong (new)

report (Constantin / Sannella)

 
Introduction to Practical Programming with Objects

Symons 

report (Franke / Glienecke / Symons )

 
Introductory Applied Machine Learning (UG / PG) NOT RUNNING IN 2022/23 report (Mac Aodha / Shimodaira /  Narayanaswamy / Nazarpour)
Introductory Applied Machine Learning (Semester 2) (Ma / Shimodaira) report (Ma / Shimodaira)  
Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition Murray / Onken / Vergari (new) report (Murray / Onken)  
Methods for Causal Inference Khamesh report (Khamesh)  
Probabilistic Modelling and Reasoning Gutmann / Williams (new) report (Gutmann)  
Reinforcement Learning Albrecht  report (Albrecht / Andreadis)
Research Methods in Security, Privacy, and Trust Aspinall / Elahi  report (Aspinall / Elahi  / Kiayias)  
Robotics: Science and Systems NOT RUNNING IN 2022/23 report (Li / Ramamoorthy)  
The Human Factor: Working with Users NOT RUNNING IN 2022/23 report (Vaniea / Wolters)