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.
Comments are removed from the published feedback where they contain offensive language, notably that directed at particular individuals, or otherwise breach the University Dignity & Respect Policy. So far this has only ever involved at most a handful of comments in any year, from the many hundreds submitted.
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.
