Teaching

Lectures

Attendance at lectures is not compulsory, but it is very strongly recommended. Students absent from lectures may miss important information about the module.

Electronic versions of slides and other handouts are usually made available on the School resources server, but not necessarily before the lecture is delivered. The handouts may not cover everything needed for the tutorials, practicals and exams; students are strongly advised to engage with lectures and take notes. Any module may contain examinable material for which lectures are the sole source.

Staff normally assume that students have attended all lectures, and make no special provision for failure to do so, other than in genuine cases—where a student has good reason for missing lectures, documented through the absence reporting process.

Tutorials

Tutorials in most sub-honours modules are held in groups of around seven students. Attendance is a compulsory element of the module; a register of attendance is taken, and held on MMS. Tutorials have several purposes:

• To supplement lecture notes and to help resolve awkward points in them.
• To prepare students for examinations by work at tutorial problems and at sample examination questions.
• To allow discussion of problems in coursework (but not to do students’ coursework for them).

A set of questions and discussion topics is usually issued in advance of each tutorial, to provide a focus for the meeting. Students should attempt to answer these questions before the tutorials and bring both questions and their answers to tutorials. More generally, students are expected to prepare properly in advance, ensuring that they have reviewed lecture material and done appropriate background reading, and to contribute actively during the tutorial.

There may not always be sufficient time in a tutorial to discuss all pre-issued questions in depth. Students should therefore come to tutorials ready to prioritise the questions that they wish to focus on. They may also raise their own questions about any aspect of the module.

Solutions and sample answers to tutorial questions are not provided to students at any time. Although additional notes are usually provided to tutors, these are not in a form appropriate for independent study material. Students are strongly encouraged to take notes during tutorials.

Exercise Classes

Some modules include exercise classes in addition to, or in place of, lectures. It may be compulsory to engage with exercise classes (if so, this will be listed in the compulsory elements for the module), and may include examinable material.

Coursework

All modules include some element of coursework, to allow students to consolidate understanding and demonstrate relevant skills. You are strongly encouraged to come into the School and use any of the School Labs physically where it is easier to talk to and get to know your peers and receive support. It is also the case that you must ensure that code submissions compile and run on School lab machines, unless otherwise instructed in the coursework specification.

It should also be noted that the School provides a resilient storage service for files stored in students’ home directories and you are encouraged to keep copies of your work on School storage.

If you are using SSH to access the lab and are storing your files in the right place on the host machines, then they will automatically be backed up. More details on lab provision can be found here.

If you are working on your own machine, we expect you to backup your work regularly and at the very least every 24 hours. As a registered student, you have access to OnceDrive via Office365 which may suffice for many smaller projects.

Demonstrator support for sub-Honours modules is available during weekday afternoons.

Resources

All electronic teaching resources are accessible at locations generally found from MMS for each module, including the student resources server (for lecture slides, coursework handouts, tutorial sheets), Panopto (for lecture recordings), Teams (live interactive classes and lectures).

The Library’s online reading list service enables you to find and access the books, journal articles, and other resources you are expected to use for your module. By clicking links in online reading lists you can see straight away the location and availability of books in the Library and get direct access to online resources. By logging in you can use the features which allow you to record what resources you’ve used, plan ahead, and create personal study notes. You can also export citations from reading lists.