Faculty Information

Faculty Survey 2004

Report by the Standing Committee on Teaching and Examining

Linguistics Tripos

20 students responded, which represents 90.9% of the students enrolled on the Tripos in 2003-4 (Reporter, Student Numbers issue, August 2004, p. 16). 13 of the respondents (65%) were women and 7 were men, which mirrors the gender balance in the Tripos as a whole (of the 22 Tripos students in 20034, 8 were men and 14 were women). 13 were in their Prelim year at the time of the survey, and 7 were taking Part II. Exactly half had switched to Linguistics after taking Part I in MML, and half after taking another Tripos. It is clear that this is a very representative sample of students taking the Linguistics Tripos.

Contents

• Information Dissemination
• Workload and Timetable
• Facilities
• Examinations
• General Section
• Summary of Recommendations

The questionnaire was very similar to the one used for the MML Tripos, but was somewhat shorter as the sections on year abroad and language combinations were not relevant to this constituency, and the facilities section was also shorter. The findings from each section are briefly presented below, and a summary of the recommendations appears at the end of the document.

Information Dissemination
This section asked students to evaluate the Departments success in providing them with information, and to assess the relative merits of the different sources of information available. As in the MML survey, the website received the most positive response, with 75% of respondents awarding either a 4 or a 5. The highest score for the handbook was a 4, awarded by a much more modest 30% of respondents. Information sent by e-mail was found to be very useful by 55% of respondents who scored it as 4 or 5. Information provided by Directors of Studies had the broadest spectrum of responses, with 35% awarding one of the bottom two scores, but 45% awarding a 4 or a 5. 'In some cases it appears that students have a Director of Studies in MML who is not well informed about the Linguistics Tripos.
Fewer than half of the respondents (40%) had attended an information session intended to help them choose papers, but virtually all of those who attended found the session rather useful (7 out of 8 awarded a score of 4). In general, respondents had been satisfied with opportunities to give feedback to the Department, with only 10% awarding the lowest two scores.
No general points emerged from the additional comments made by students. While the small number of staff members could be seen as problematical where one person fulfils several roles (DoS, supervisor, main lecturer, co-ordinator), on the other hand the small size of the department seemed to make it possible to effect change by informal routes.

Recommendations
The Department can continue to move increasingly to using the website as the main source of information: it may not be necessary to continue to produce the hard-copy handbook.
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Workload and Timetable
In general, respondents classified their workload in the survey year as heavy but manageable (65%). Only 10% found the workload to be excessively heavy. No students had had a serious problem with timetable clashes, and not one had been prevented from choosing a paper they would have liked to have chosen by timetable problems. Once again, no consistent picture emerges from the additional comments made by students, although there is some suggestion that there are timetabling problems with supervisions, leading to a very uneven workload across the term.

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Facilities
This section covered the Faculty Library and the Phonetics Laboratory.

• The Library 45% of the respondents visit the Faculty Library most days, and only 15% visit less than once a week figures which correspond very closely to those for the MML Tripos. In the Library, the majority of students prepare work for classes and supervisions (80%) and borrow regularly: 80% borrow books more than once a week. IT resources, other than the on-line catalogue, are used by three-fifths of the respondents (40%): only a quarter of respondents read newspapers, magazines and journals in the Library. The majority of respondents (70%) do use the Library outside the 95, MondayFriday envelope. From the small number of comments it appears that students would like the Word programme to be available in the Library so that essays could be written there, they would like more core texts to be available and not on overnight loan, and they would appreciate a security system to combat theft.
• The Phonetics Laboratory Very few of the respondents use the Phonetics Laboratory, with 75% answering not applicable to this question. The 5 undergraduates who use the facility are relatively satisfied with it (no scores below 3). It appears that students use this facility relatively little outside of taught phonetics classes.

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Examinations
This section dealt with information about examinations, and with the regulations for dissertations. The main resources which respondents say they used for getting information about examinations are supervisors (90%), lecturers in Faculty classes (85%) and past exam papers in College libraries (80%). Past papers in the Faculty Library were used by just under half (45%) and examiners reports by a very modest 20%. Again, these findings are in line with the MML Tripos survey. Half of the respondents (10) were working on an optional dissertation for Part II (rather surprisingly, since only 7 of the respondents were actually taking Part II at the time of the survey). Only 3 of these 10 found the guidelines to be reasonably straightforward and clear (score of 4). This suggests that these guidelines need to be improved.

Recommendations

• The attention of the students should be drawn to examiners reports, perhaps by notices in the Library as well as by comments from lecturers. This resource is underused.
• The dissertation guidelines need to be improved.

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General Section
The concluding section asked students about their general satisfaction levels with the range of papers available and with the balance between College and Faculty teaching. These questions were included in the general questionnaire because they fell outside the scope of what might be elicited through questionnaires on teaching for individual papers.

Most respondents were satisfied by the range of scheduled papers: 70% gave a score of 4 or 5, and only one respondent gave a score below 3. In general respondents are also happy with the balance between college and Faculty teaching, with 65% of responses scored at 4 or 5. As in the MML Tripos, there was a noticeable gender difference here, with virtually all the women expressing satisfaction with the college Faculty balance, but 71.4% of the male respondents rating their satisfaction as only average (score of 3). Unfortunately, the additional comments give very little information about this apparent lack of satisfaction. A small number of students commented at considerable length on what they perceive as an over-emphasis on particular kinds of formal linguistics at the expense of more breadth: however, it is difficult to get a representative picture of student views here.

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Summary of Recommendations

• The Department can continue to move increasingly to using the website as the main source of information: it may not be necessary to continue to produce the hard-copy handbook.
• The attention of the students should be drawn to examiners reports, perhaps by notices in the Library as well as by comments from lecturers. This resource is underused.
• The dissertation guidelines need to be improved.
• The Faculty should publish this report on the website and draw students attention to it by e-mail.
• The Faculty should consider what further use it wishes to make of the responses to the survey.

Standing Committee on Teaching and Examining 14.01.05

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