Brief description of the paper

At its meeting on 30 May 2008, Academic Standards Committee received the Report of the Review of Departmental Programmes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment of the Department of Computing Science held on 7 March 2008. Following consideration by the Committee, the recommendations were forwarded for action to the relevant staff. The attached report summarises the responses and confirms the progress to date.

The report has been considered by the Convener of the Review Panel, who is satisfied that the majority of the Panel’s recommendations have been, as far as possible, given full and appropriate consideration and draws particular attention to the following:

Recommendation 1 – This recommendation has not yet been completed and it is recommended that the Department be advised to seek the advice of colleagues in the Learning and Teaching Centre and report progress in 6 months time.

Recommendation 8 - Good progress has been made; the Convener understands the issue outlined in the final sentence of the Department’s response.

Recommendation 10 – Workload model - if it is the case that ‘some supervisor’s projects are always more popular than others’, it is suggested that a suitable algorithm might be devised to address this.

Recommendation 11 – The Convener notes that the action in relation to this recommendation is incomplete in that the response from the Director of Finance, who was consulted on probable budget availability next year (ie Session 2009-10), is not yet available. He suggests that, given that most clusters are used for low-end tasks and that the cost/function of computing equipment continues to fall, it should be possible to meet Computing Science’s needs from existing budgets.

Recommendation 14 - the updated response includes an attached report (Appendix 1).

Recommendation 15 – from the responses provided, the Convener has concluded:

1. That PAT testing is not required because the equipment is not provided by the Department. Hence no fee will be incurred. A visual inspection only would be required.
2. The generic HSE rules do not apply in the circumstances of a Computing Science laboratory and hence that student laptops can be used in Departmental laboratories.

Action Requested

Academic Standards Committee is asked to:

1. consider the adequacy of the responses and the progress made;
2. note the points that the Convener had drawn attention to in relation to Recommendations 1, 8, 10, 11, 14 and 15;
3. recommend action as appropriate.

Recommended Person/s responsible for taking action(s) forward

As identified in the report.

Resource implications

No additional resource implications have been identified, although the outcome of Recommendation 11 could identify resource issues.

Timescale for Implementation

As outlined.

Equality implications

No specific implications identified.