Written exam

The hand-in format of the written exam, with questions over several pages and several hand-ins to keep track of, was stressful and confusing. (Examiner Thommy: yes, I agree, it would have been better with one page with questions, and one pdf hand-in).

The grade limit of 85 points for the highest grade is quite high. (Examiner Thommy: it depends on how it is graded and what you compare with. There is no formal standard for this at Chalmers. Looking at the result, a couple of students managed to get a 5 as grade.)

Essay A was confusing, would have been easier with just one problem to find and solve. (Examiner Thommy: yes, it was clear in the hand-ins that some confused the number of problems etc. that needed to be included. It could have been more clear, but we did try to be as clear as possible.)

Why was there a word limit? (Examiner Thommy: Two reasons: make it quicker to grade within the 15-day limit we have to grade the exam, and to make it more fair so that you need to know quite explicitly what is correct, and you can’t give a shot gun approach to you answer (write a lot of things in hope something is correct.)

Course grade

Can you get a 5 on the course even if you did not get a 5 on the Written Exam? (Examiner Thommy: yes, we add the score from the Written Exam and the Individual Project, and that determines the course grade. So if you have high score on the Individual Project, you could get a 5 on the course even if you got a 4 on the Written Exam).

Group project

Groups with six people was a bit too many. (Examiner Thommy: yes, I agree, five or maybe even four would have been better)

Exercises versus group project

The group project takes quite much time, and we discussed the alternative for next year to have five exercises and no project. We all were quite positive towards this, and it is interesting to hear comments about this in the course evaluation survey and the last course representative meeting.

Written exam online next year?

We discussed the possibility to have the written exam online instead of as a hall exam next year, regardless of the pandemic or not. We agreed that there were advantages with the current format; it is more relaxing to sit in your home, the ordinary hall exam environment is quite tense, the current form was actually fun, and felt as a learning opportunity. Examiner Thommy’s view is also that it seemed to be able to test everyone’s knowledge reasonably well. This is also something that could be discussed further after the course.