Imperial College's Department of Civil Engineering has caused quite a stir around college after refusing to allow its masters students fill in the autumn Master's Online Evaluation (MOLE), claiming that the survey wasn't good enough.
MOLE, a new survey launched in 2009, is designed to obtain feedback from students about individual course modules, lectures and lecturers in an effort to improve Imperial's standard of teaching.
Despite MOLE, and Imperial's other student online evaluaton surveys (SOLE, TOLE and ROLE), being rewritten by college's statisticians with statistical validity in mind, the Department of Civil Engineering has said that the survey is "statistically invalid" and insists that its own survey is better.
Dean of Students, Professor Susan Eisenbach, requested several weeks ago that the department submit the results of its own student survey to registry, to prove that it has complied with college's basic quality assurance procedures, however the department has failed to submit the necessary data and it is believed that they do not plan upon doing so in the future.
This lack of feedback comes after 14 masters students in the Civil Engineering department failed their course in the last academic year, missing out upon a degree from Imperial. The department only had 87 masters students during this time.
In the same year, around 30 of the department's first year students also failed the year before resits. This makes up around one-third of the entire year.
Over the summer, senior tutor Adrian Butler was replaced with Jamie Standing, however the department insists that this was not related to the high failure rates. An anonymous email to Live! in October said "the story is that the rector wasn't happy".
"Unacceptable" Results
Live! contacted Deputy President (Education), Jon Silver, who said that the failure rate was "totally unacceptable". When Live! quoted this to Professor Julian Bommer, Director of Undergraduate studies for the Department of Civil Engineering, he aggressively defended his department, asking whether Live! had contacted other students who would have had the value of their degrees lowered had the failed students been allowed to pass.
Professor Bommer informed Live! that the department did not have a comment to make, however he did talk about the "acceptability" of the results in an email to the Live! Editor, saying: "a debate on pass marks, failure rates and standards in education would be addressing very key and important issues. And my starting point is that what would be most unacceptable would be for Imperial to line itself up with the erosion of standards and dumbing down that has infected this country so strongly in recent years. We need to be comfortable with being - and remaining - an elite institution".
Imperial College currently has set departments of targets for departments, suggesting that 70% of students should be awarded either a 2:1 or a 1st at the end of their degree. Imperial's departments are regularly criticised for handing out poor degrees, with last year's Deputy President (Education & Welfare) Hannah Theodorou suggesting in an interview with Live! that departments not meeting these targets either have a poor intake of students, poor quality of teaching or have set their standards too high.
The failures in Civil Engineering were mentioned at the Engineering Studies Committee in November 2009, with Professor Bommer blaming the high number of failings in the department was due to the pass-mark in exams being raised from 30% to 40%, rather than an increase in the difficulty of the course or a lower calibre of student. However Live! has not received reports of other departments experiencing the same surge in failings, despite the same conditions.
Bommer said that in a usual year around ten first year students would fail their initial exams, and that had the 40% pass-mark been implemented several years ago then higher numbers of students would have failed in those years too.
He went on to explain that of the 14 students that failed the fourth year of their course, around 12 were a group of friends who had been "coasting" along for the entirety of their degree, just scraping through.
The Director of Undergraduate Studies said that he hoped the increased pass-mark in earlier years would separate such individuals earlier in their time at Imperial, thus decreasing failure rates in later years.
Staff Feedback
As well as students not being able to fill in MOLE, the Department of Civil Engineering did not pass feedback from TOLE, Imperial's Tutorial Online Evaluation survey, to personal tutors.
Imperial College Union's DPE, Jon Silver, said that "it's still a great shame that the [TOLE] feedback never got there", saying that along with the feedback from MOLE the survey gave tutors - all of whom were rated positively by students - "evidence" of their high standards of teaching.
The lack of this evidence for staff in the department would, Silver claimed, make it harder for staff to obtain promotions backed-up by their performance.
Live! contacted the Head of Department of Civil Engineering, Professor David Nethercot, however the department has so far declined this opportunity to comment. Live! does, however, understand that Professor Susan Eisenbach is currently negotiating for the department to participate in the Spring MOLE survey.
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