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Spring LEQ Stillborn

Mar 19 2002 22:37

Simon Scrapmetal

Another disaster for the Lecture Evaluation Questionnaires as the Spring survey is postponed until December.

At least the autumn LEQ was accessible (most of the time), even if it didn't exactly work well...

After an inauspicious college-wide rollout of the on-line LEQ system last term amidst massive criticism from students unable to login, unable to access their course lists or simply concerned about security, many citizens of the Imperial nation will have been hoping that the Spring exercise would be much improved.

The spring term's last issue of Felix released today is heavily promoting the Spring LEQ exercise - complete with a full page advert and a page of (abbreviation filled) questions and answers. Advised that the LEQ would be taking place over this week, this correspondent eagerly attempted to logon. Perhaps Simon would experience the true joy of finally being able to fully express his opinion of some of the lecturers he has been forced to tolerate this term. Some chance.

An e-mail being circulated to students today from Imperial's Pro Rector (Educational Quality) Professor Rees Rawlings announces that the entire process has been called off. "[We] became aware at the end of last week of multiple vulnerabilities in the ORACLE WebDb software that had just been discovered," said Professor Rawlings. "These unforeseen circumstances, which are outside the College's control, compromise the security of student responses to the LEQ site...I have decided to cancel the survey."

This latest calamity to befall Imperial College's already tattered reputation for technical competence is bound to rekindle calls for an explanation over why the entire task of designing a working LEQ system was not simply handed over to a couple of DoC students armed with some free software and a few hours of spare time. According to Professor Rawlings the next LEQ will not take place until December, though it seems that few students now hold out any hope that College will have perfected the system by then.

In the meantime, students are once again left without a satisfactory method of providing feedback on their lecturers. Welcome to Imperial College.

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Discussion about “Spring LEQ Stillborn”

The comments below are unmoderated submissions by Live! readers. The Editor accepts no liability for their content, nor for any offence caused by them. Any complaints should be directed to the Editor.

1. Ashley Brown

Mar 19 2002 23:17

Prof Rawlings, in a letter to Felix:

"Thus the system is robust and was not successfully hacked."

Above:

"[We] became aware at the end of last week of multiple vulnerabilities in the ORACLE WebDb software that had just been discovered"

The same vulnerabilities exploited when it wasn't successfully hacked maybe?

What a joke.

2. Ashley Brown

Mar 19 2002 23:21

Oh yeah, the link to the letter

3. sam

Mar 20 2002 02:14

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

much as i hate to say it, will someone apart from me who knows a decent amount of PHP/mySQL put them out of their misery...!!!!!

actually in this case i don't care if you use postgreSQL, as long as it works!!!!!!!!!!!!

[edited due to excessive use of exclamation marks - Editor]

4. Shovi

Mar 20 2002 10:07

What a bunch of fucking muppets!

5. Oliver Pell

Mar 20 2002 10:30

Colourful, but regrettably accurate (it seems). http://www.leq.ic.ac.uk doesn't even provide a nice 'sorry, we're cancelled' page, just nothingness....

6. Nick Maynard

Mar 20 2002 11:20

Must... resist...

7. Nick Maynard

Mar 20 2002 11:23

One other thing.

Does all this mean that Professor Rawlings (having now admitted that College does in fact suck at this sort of thing) is going to apologise to the students who "did not successfully hack" the system, yet were disciplined anyway?

8. Ashley Brown

Mar 20 2002 18:33

I don't suppose the Hit Squad would be willing to make a special return in these exceptional circumstances?

9. Oliver Pell

Mar 20 2002 22:51

I'm not sure what's the going rate for Pro Rectors...

10. Andy Heeps

Mar 21 2002 09:09

Well, given the current success rate of the hit squad, I'd say Prof Rawlings shouldn't be too worried...

11. Mustafa Arif

Mar 26 2002 14:17

Well we could get a decent LEQ system up-and-running on this site at abouts two weeks notice (coursework deadlines, etc. permitting).

However, it would be politically unwise for us to mention this in public, as it would make a lot of important people look very silly.

Oh woops. We just did.

12. Mustafa Arif

Mar 26 2002 14:18

...and still wouldn't (necessarily) solve the problem of getting students to "buy in" to the process. i.e. to actually use an online system.

13. Mustafa Arif

Mar 26 2002 14:25

...and we'd make those people look even more silly if we actually did rather than just mentioning we could do it. Which is the only reason why we didn't just go ahead and do our own LEQ for this term.

14. eddie

Mar 26 2002 16:46

The correct next stage, Mustafa, is to post the link to this great invention of yours... why wouldnt you want them to look silly? thats not really like you is it?

Closed This discussion is closed.