Feedback to students
All feedback on this course, until the final exam, is
formative as
opposed to summative. That is, it aims to help you decide what to work on,
and is not used in determining your final mark on the course. A major
reason for this is that software engineering is almost always a team
activity, and the most interesting problems have many solutions. In this
course, you should feel able to discuss your work with anyone, and work in
groups whenever it seems appropriate to you, without worrying about whether
you have offended against a "your own unaided work" rule.
Some of the ways in which you will be able to get feedback:
- Doing the automatically marked questions that will be available, for
example, after you've watched a course video. These questions are typically
very simple, with only one right answer, and aim to let you check whether
you have understood basic issues.
- Attending "lectures", which will actually often be interactive
sessions of discussing and problem-solving. You will have a chance to get
feedback on your ideas and solutions to problems, from your peers and from
the lecturer.
- Attending tutorials, and participating actively to generate and check
ideas with the help of your tutor and other students.
- Handing in written versions of the tutorial exercises, and later of
any exam questions you like to do. Give them to me, either electronically
by email (link below), or on paper whenever you see me. Update 10/11/14: contrary to what I thought earlier
(because it turns out there's more detailed information elsewhere than I
had found!), this does not have to be affected by the UCU assessment and marking boycott,
because this work does not contribute to your mark on this course.
Therefore I will continue to give feedback on such work as previously: feel
free to hand it in! For general interest, and to understand any effect the
action may have in the context of other courses, one good news article on
the background to this action is here.
This page is maintained by
Perdita Stevens (
perdita@inf.ed.ac.uk)
