CA414: Student Survey on Teaching - 1999/2000

These are the results of the student survey of teaching on CA414: Multimedia Information Systems as delivered to CA4, CAE4 and CL4 classes.

A total of 12 questions from the standard University questionnaire collection of questions, with results in the range 1..7 were asked, plus 3 open questions. 37 responses to the survey were returned 20 from CA4, 11 from CAE4 and 6 from CL4. All were anonymous.

The elements of this module I like best are (students were asked to list at most 3):

• Multimedia Technologies
• The whole course is very informative.
• It's interesting to learn how Multimedia plays a part in everyday life.
• Good comprehensive notes
• Practical applications
• The essay project
• Hardware
• Content access to text.
• Home page for course is very good with loads of lines.
• Openess of the lectures: discussion within the class is promoted.
• Relevance to real world computing.
• Gives a broad technical overview of what is going on in computing.
• Internet specific material
• Essay topics - allow one to pick internet area.
• Assignment
• It's interesting.
• Hypertext and the web.
• Learning about up to date technologies.
• It deals with some very current technologies.
• The way in which the lectures are presented.
• Talking about new technologies.
• Web research.
• Demonstrations
• Material covered in lectures is very interesting.
• Text retrieval
• Context
• Introduction/new slant on topics.
• Very up to date material. Subject matter is relevant to computing in general in society.
• Continuous assessment essay is a good idea (that you can choose your own topic).
• Multimedia technologies.
• Video
• The latest technology
• Datashow.
• Lots of examples available.
• Content retrieval of video.
• It's fast moving, wer're not learning what happened in the 50's, 60's, 70's........ which is great!
• Content. Based retrieval of information.
• Text retrieval.
• Search engines.
• Notes are excellent.
• Searching + IR.
• It has a broad coverage of its topic.
• The content is very relevant and interesting.
• Gaining an excellent idea/insight of the WWW/IR, etc.
• Practical application of theory demonstrated via the web in lectures.
• Searching
• Digital media formats
• Lecturer makes material interesting and is enthusiastic about his subject.
• Hypertext and the WWW.
• Internet
• Useful info. to know. Great pub conversations, 404 error, file not file.
• Accessable lecturer.
• Hypertext and the WWW.
• Live demo.
• User interfaces.
• Sources of additional info. are pointed to on the web.
• HCI
• It is interesting.
• Very easy to follow whats going on.
• That you can pick areas you like and study more on them.
• Explanation of complex topics by lecturer is very good.
• Video streaming.
• GUI Design

The elements of this module I like least are (students were asked to provide at most 3):

• Difficult to cover everything - very large.
• A lot of material over very broad range. Hard to tell what way to prepare for it for exam.
• Large emphasis on text retrieval.
• Content based retrieval of multimedia information.
• The continuous assessment is in the form of an essay.
• Stuff to do with hypertext.
• The amount of information contained is one lecture.
• Material on storage mechanisms - very boring.
• Content access to text.
• Essay is slightly too long.
• Text IR.
• A lot of reading, from notes, rather than summary.
• Text retrieval (a bit dull).
• Storage .......... ........... s.d.
• No practical side to course.
• It does deal with a large amount of material through the material from the lectures to the extra research for the course.
• A lot to take in in a relatively short space of time.
• Essay.
• The large amount of info. in each lecture.
• Essay writing.
• The section on text based retrieval is a bit big.
• Retrieval techniques.
• Missed lectures.
• Essay
• Things that are not relevant to todays world. At times too much history involved.
• If a lecture is missed, a great deal of information is lost because the lecturer supplements the notes with his thoughts/views.
• Vectors and IR for images etc.
• Not enough classes per week.
• Exam
• No opportunity to do a project using the new technology. The course should be 60% practical and 40% theory. It is more important to be able to use the application than know the history.
• I think the essay should be worth a bit more of the final years mark due to its length.

I (would / would not) recommend this module to others (students were asked to provide 3 reasons):

• Interesting content.
• Interesting subject matter.
• Very up to date.
• Popularity of multimedia today.
• It is highly interesting.
• Interesting
• The subject matter is interesting.
• Good course.
• Interesting content.
• It being very interesting, relevant and modern.
• Very up to date and interesting.
• Good lectures.
• ................ Technology.
• Very well presented and understood.
• It is a good way of getting/keeping up to date with ....................
• It teaches you about interesting and modern technology, important in todays society.
• I personally enjoyed the course.
• The subject is very interesting.
• Very relevant to the world today.
• Interesting.
• Current information
• Interesting material covered on course.
• Interesting subject.
• Relevant materials - todays theory today.
• Relevance
• Well taught module
• Learn about many different technologies.
• Orientated towards new industry needs.
• It is relevant to work after college.
• Educational.
• Topical.
• Common more current/relative than some other courses.
• Stays away from programming. Thankfully the continuous assessment helps you to learn a great deal about your choosen topic.
• Interesting topics.
• Up to date.
• Interesting.
• The lectures are great fun and the hour zooms by.
• I feel that I have learnt a lot from the course.
• The lecturer is fantastic.
• Very interesting.
• Informative.
• Different type of subject than most subjects covered in this Degree. More about students opinion of topics covered.
• Relaxed classes.
• Interesting coverage - makes it easier to learn.
• Essay type assignment.
• Notes are done well.
• Links all elements of the computer course as so one can see how for example AI, databases are used in multimedia.
• Makes you think about the future.
• Useful information to know.
• Up to date (relevant).
• Relate to topics.
• The lecturer is so helpful and always or almost there to help answer questions (willing)
• It has sparked my interest in the area.
• The subject is a welcome break from the subjects we've spent the last four years learning.
• Knowledge gained from it will apply to industry.
• Interesting lecturer - unusual !

Page last updated 19 March, 2000