Artificial Intelligence Methods (G5BAIM)
Course Feedback - Academic Year 1997/98
This course is run at Nottingham University. It is a second/third year option. This page summarises the feedback from the students that attended the course
The lecturer is Graham Kendall. Feel free to email me.
The home page for the course (including a full set of course handouts) can be found here.
All the comments from the feedback forms are listed.
Finally, the lecturer (Graham Kendall) gives a brief response to the main points raised.
Comments from Course Feedback Forms
General Comments
- Brilliant lecturer - very complete notes, although there was often too many of them
- Good Notes
- Course Notes were very good and explained the course content very well.
- Lecturer (Graham Kendall) was excellent. Clear, understandable and full, comprehensive notes available.
- Best module taken this year. Thanks
- Very good course, really interesting
- Enjoyable course. Taught very well.
- The course is actually useful, unlike some of the others.
- Good presentation, if a little boring
- Possibly the most interesting course this semester
- Boring Module. Good Lectures
- Taking 2 weeks out broke up the course and made the last few lectures a bit packed - could have found someone else to lecture for two weeks
- Perhaps some code examples for things like Genetic Algorithms etc. (just so I know how it'd be coded)
- Harder Content please
- Interesting but perhaps too many notes and coursework
- Too much material is covered in the course
- I thought the course was generally interesting but tried to cover too much material, particularly towards the end of the course. The lectures carried on too long considering most people have several exams and group and individual projects and a lot of other courses finished slightly earlier.
- Most enjoyable course. Well presented. Great notes. A lot of help when approached. Well done.
- A bit rushed at the end.
- Do something practical to actually interest us; for example noughts and crosses
- Very good module and continues on from AI from the first year semester in Psychology
- Formula's in coursework was different from that in handouts.
- Having done all the AI modules in Psychology in the first year the course was easier for me.
- I think the AI modules that I have studied are not too taxing, however I have avoided AI programming.
- Too much information covered in the course
- Course overlapped a lot with a psychology module
- Straight forward course content
- May possibly have liked a bit of programming in the coursework
- Slight overlap with AI 1A and 1B in the first year.
Coursework
- The last piece of coursework is very confusing and does not give any real help in how to answer it. The other pieces of coursework were fine and it was good there was no programming.
- Third coursework is too vague and only loosely connected to the material covered
- Better outlining of coursework.
Notes/Handouts
- Don't like paying for notes, all other departments give their notes out for free
- Nice to have notes and OHP's
- Notes in PDF rather than Postscript
- Would prefer pre-printed handouts
- Notes too a large chunk from the print quota
- The well structured handouts were very useful and the scope of the coursework helped in understanding the lectures
- Having course notes on the web is a good idea but it is expensive for the student who has to print them out. This is an oversight, I feel, since there are a very large amount of pages comprising the notes. From a students point of view it would be cheaper to get the documentation printed and sold for maybe 50p for 80 pages as opposed to paying eight pounds to print them out in the department.
- Very good handouts
- I'd rather have the notes pre-printed
- Handouts would be better in PDF format. This would save having to print them in the doc lab.
- Handouts would be better if we could buy them already photocopied from the secretary
- Make notes and coursework more consistent
- I think that the material covered was OK and the notes were good.
- Don't like having to pay to print out the handouts. They are free in psychology
Total Questionnaires Returned = 38
Number of students who sat exam = 58
Lecturers Response
The major problem seems to be the cost of having to print the handouts (although I get the impression that you liked the handouts themselves). However, as you can see from the questionnaire most students think that it is a good idea to distribute the notes via the WWW. This is obviously a problem as putting them on the Web implies that you will have to print them.
Assuming I run the course next year, I will look into this area of the course and will try to make it better (and cheaper!).
The other main problem seems to be the third coursework. The reason I set this type of coursework is because the previous two could be done simply by referring to the notes and working through them. I thought it would be a good idea to set some coursework that you had to think about and come up with some original ideas.
The only other alternative was to set a programming exercise which I was loathed to do so late in the semester.
As I said in my recent EMAIL I will talk about the coursework in the next lecture and will answer any questions you have.
Overall, I was pleased with the way the course went. From the comments I think the course was generally well received and I wish you luck in the exam.