We want your education and student experience to be interesting, challenging and rewarding. We value your opinions and your feedback enables us to understand what we do well and what we need to improve.
Find out below how your feedback continues to bring positive changes to the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ student experience:
Assessment and Feedback
You said you wanted more feedback on economics exams.
We have:
- Provided collective exam feedback on all core undergraduate courses.
- Provided average marks per question so you can interpret your overall mark.
- Provided exam result distributions for each undergraduate course.
- Provided exam solutions for all exams.
We are:
- Running a pilot in EC411 that will allow you to view your exam script.
- Running a pilot in the Summer Term in EC413 and EC417 that will allow you to view your exam script.
You said that having 2nd year exams weighted at 50% in Lent Term put too much pressure on you to study during the Christmas period.
We have
- Changed the weighting of all 2nd year Economics exams to 25% for Lent Term and 75% for Summer Term (except EC230, which is taken by students outside of the Department).
You said you would benefit from more course support.
We have:
- Arranged ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ LIFE support sessions specifically for EC201.
- Created additional lecture group office hour sessions for EC201.
- Created weekly two hour group workshop sessions for EC210.
You said you would like more examples of MSc Extended Essays.
We are:
- Increasing the number of example essays available.
You asked for additional Extended Essay support.
We are:
- Providing weekly two hour Extended Essay Drop-in Surgeries up until the Extended Essay deadline.
- Running a pilot for all 'EC' Extended Essay courses that fall within the Department of Economics - feedback sheets will be provided to students upon request.
You asked for a more diverse assessment load for undergraduate courses.
We are:
- Changing the assessments for the following undergraduate courses for the academic year 2018-2019.
EC302
From: Exam (100%, duration: 3 hours, reading time: 15 minutes in the summer exam period)
To: Exam (90%, duration: 3 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the summer exam period and Group Project (10%) in the Lent Term (full details can be found in the ).
EC317
From: Exam (100%, duration: 3 hours, reading time: 15 minutes in the summer exam period)
To: Exam (85%, duration: 3 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the summer exam period and Class participation (15%) in the Michaelmas and Lent Terms.
Student Voice
You said you would like more input.
We have:
- Provided a dedicated online SSLC feedback questionnaire.
- Encouraged our undergraduate students to contribute to their weekly newsletter.
- Increased the use of social media as a means for communication.
- Arranged dedicated feedback sessions for second year students to meet with senior academic staff.
- Upon student feedback, worked with the School to ensure that students can switch between EC220 & EC221 (and vice versa) using the Lent Term course change procedure, from Lent Term 2018/19.
You asked for extended access to study spaces in 32LIF during exam season.
We have:
- Arranged for extended and weekend access to all study spaces in 32LIF until the end of May.
Learning Community
You said you would like more social and community events to take place.
We have:
- Established an undergraduate Social Events Committee who will, with our support, arrange student social events within the Department.
- Arranged a group volunteering opportunity for undergraduate students in conjunction with the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Volunteer Centre.
- Arranged a postgraduate lunch with departmental academic staff.
Teaching
You said you wanted more teaching innovations in core undergraduate courses.
We have:
Taken the time to innovate the teaching on our core undergraduate courses, to include:
- Inviting guest lecturers for MT EC102 lectures, and providing students with verbal reasoning skills during the LT of EC102.
- Two hour classes on EC201, with groups at 30 students, to enable group work and more targeted learning.
- Unconventional teaching on EC210, to go beyond textbooks. Every week in the Lent term there will be a question about financial systems, inflation, recessions, monetary and fiscal policy, from the perspective of recent crises and their consequences. The course will then introduce the main tools, models and data of macroeconomics in the process of answering these questions.
- Working with data in EC220 during the MT to encourage students to learn how to craft their own answers to questions in order to push forward their understanding of economics.
For more information, please see Undergraduate economics teaching.