G51SWT Feedback 2005

The overall module average was 51%, a slight drop on last year despite the changes in teaching style to present more of the material rather than relying on textbook reading.

Attendance at lab sessions continued to be low.

1st Coursework

Most people who attempted this managed OK and the average mark was around 66%. A big increase over the similar coursework last year.

2nd Coursework

The average mark for this was around 75% partly because an element of groupwork was involved and most groups managed to get nearly full marks for that aspect. Again this was a significant improvement on last year.

3rd Coursework

The average mark was around 70% another marked improvement on last year. This may reflect the removal of recursion and CGI programming from the coursework.

The Exam

Question 1

This was compulsory question with an average mark of 9/20. This was a dramatic drop on last year where the average was more like 14/20. The marks in this question appear to track the point in the module at which the exercise on which the question is based appears. In this case it was a later exercise and the performance was correspondingly poor.

Question 1

Software Qualities. 34 students attempted this question. Where last year the equivalent question was the most popular this year it was relatively unpopular. The average was 11/20 however which was better than the previous year.

Question 2

Design and Specification Notation. Performance was poor on this question with an average of only 9/20 (though again this was an improvement on last year) and it was attempted by only 31 students.

Question 3

Version Control. This was a popular question attempted by 53 students, possibly because the CVS system was also used in an exercise. The average mark was around 13/20 (again an improvement on the mark for the Make exercise last year).

Question 4

Perl. 59 students attempted this question (unsurprising as Perl was covered by one assessed exercise and several formative exercises). The average mark was only 10/20 - another improvement on last year but the part of Perl being examined was considerably less complex.

It is striking that for all but one individual part of the module and exam the averages are higher than last year (in many cases significantly higher) whereas the overall average is down. It is of note that 18 people either attempted only the exam or only some of the courseworks. I don't have statistics on previous years for partial attempts on the module but my guess would be that, where students were attempting an assessment, they were on average doing better but more students than previously were only attempting some of the assessments, hence the overall average went down.