[Academic] PH450: Message to Students and Report Excerpt Feedback

[Daniel Oi]

To PH450 Supervisors:

The students have been sent the following message about their projects:
A reminder that the 10 page excerpt from your report is due today for sending to your supervisor for comment and feedback. Considering the rapidly changing and challenging circumstances, some degree of flexibility is reasonable but discuss with your supervisor about the arrangements for handling this aspect of the course should there be any problems. Zoom is being set-up as a method for remote teaching and supervision, your supervisor may wish to use the facilities on MyPlace or alternative arrangements if appropriate.

The University directive to shut down in-person teaching will also impact upon practical (including laboratory-based) work for the projects. All students should now be concentrating upon writing up their reports regardless. As part of the discussion and conclusion section of your report, you may explain any mitigating circumstances that have affected the project, along with discussion on what you might have done and what you might have found and their significance. This is in addition to the usual discussion of future work etc.

As usual, the reports will be marked and the Supervisor will provide their assessment of the student's performance during the project. New arrangements for the examination period are being prepared and you will be informed of these in due course, including those for the vivas.

Due to the rapidly changing circumstances, regularly check MyPlace notices and any other communications from the department, lecturers, and supervisor. We are all working hard to manage the transition to the new arrangements and we will try to address your concerns where practicable.

Dr Daniel Oi
PH450 Projects Coordinator

The vivas are TBC at this point. The students should be encouraged to work especially hard on their reports as they will form the majority of the mark in any case.

In providing feedback on the 10 page excerpt, the main aspects to consider are the clarity of the writing, completeness and detail of the data being presented, and coherence of the report. A more detailed list (e.g. references, citations, graphs) is provided in the Appendix of the project booklet so please direct your students to that. The reports will be marked by the Supervisor, Independent Marker, and a Chair (to provide cross-comparison and consistency), hence two-thirds of the markers may not be experts in the project topic hence the style and content of the report should be aimed at a general physics audience. Please try to give timely feedback so that any improvements can be implemented in good time before the due date, Monday 6th April 2020 at Noon.

Daniel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phys.strath.ac.uk/pipermail/academic/attachments/20200316/965db137/attachment.html>