The lecturer will provide feedback verbally during lectures, by handouts, solutions and comments posted on the website, and regular weekly email summaries sent to all students. Students are highly encouraged to give positive and/or negative feedback related to this unit of study or the school to the lecturer or tutors at any time. Without feedback, potential problems or difficulties cannot be identified and rectified. Students are welcome to give feedback personally to the lecturer at anytime via any means they see fit. There have been several changes to the structure of this unit over the past few years. This is based both on the student feedback at the end of each year, plus the lecturer’s own assessment of the areas in which students appear to have difficulty. Syllabus: While the syllabus has been generally unchanged, most years there are some modifications to examples, assignments, issues concentrated on in lectures etc, based on how students performed the previous year. Workload: Over the past few years, the number and relative weighting of assignments has shifted towards quizzes. The number of assignments is now the minimum amount to ensure the lecturer can monitor progress, give feedback, and correct any areas where some extra revision might be needed. Students have access to a large number of tutorial questions. It is for students to decide how many (if any!) of the tutorial problems they wish to attempt. It is important that students take increased initiative in how much work they want to do, while still having small but reasonable "compulsory" assessment tasks. If students are doing the assignments and tutorials, then the quizzes follow on directly from then, and it is not expected that much additional "study" was required. The quizzes are to ensure that students are keeping reasonably up to date with the tutorials. Relative weighting for assignment tasks: Some comments on the relative workload associated with tasks have been received - e.g. a 1 hr quiz was worth 5%, but the main lab report, which might have taken you 10 hours, was worth 10%. From one point of view, this is a valid comment, but students should consider another point of view. The quizzes represented 2 weeks’ worth of lectures and tutorials, so this starts to even things out. It is regrettable that some students copy, and hence the relative value of take home assignments needs to be relatively low to ensure students pass the course based on their own work, not that of another student. Grading scheme: Some students have commented that the marking scheme in quizzes and assignments. For an assignment, there is nothing necessarily "special" about getting a straightforward question (nearly) correct or having the right method. All students should be capable of doing that - and hence that is the standard for getting a pass (which is on average about 60%). Students need to show they understand the issue and set the answer out clearly. For units & significant figures the marking is deliberately harsh to get the message across. It will be emphasised many times during the semester that units are important and marks will be deducted for incorrect use. Previous year results indicate that many students still do not have confidence in units by the end of the semester. Unless marks are deducted for poor units, students will not see the importance of them or try to improve. Units are not difficult - it is just practice. Some students made a valid point that a silly arithmetic mistake may result in getting 0 for a quiz question - the same as not attempting a question at all. The lecturer does appreciate this concern. However, for relatively straightforward questions in an open book quiz, it is not unrealistic to expect the correct answer. Half marks in quizzes are also frequently awarded. Another aim of the quiz is to provide quick feedback. All quizzes are returned in a week later, with full solutions on the internet. A more detailed marking scheme would increase marking time, delay the return of quizzes and would reduce the number of quizzes that could be offered. Availability of Solutions: Based on feedback received from students, from 2017 • Answers only will be published when we start a new topic • Selected solutions will be posted within a week of finishing the topic. Solutions are intentionally delayed to ensure that students attempt practice problems without the temptation of looking at solutions. Students will not have the solutions in front of them in the exam or in a real job, so it is important to develop confidence in solutions now. There are many worked examples given in class for students to learn the appropriate methods. Students are most welcome to look at any other textbook on topic and refer to the solutions given in those texts.