Response to Speech Processing feedback of 2019-10-24

[Simon]

Thank you for the useful feedback (from 34 responses), regarding the Speech Processing course. I have clustered your comments, and my responses are below.

I’ve responded to all negative points made by at least 2 people. I have briefly summarised the positive points without adding any response. Please do feel free to follow up and offer more feedback or clarification.

If you can’t find a written response to your feedback, it’s because no-one else commented on that issue. But I do take all feedback into account, and nothing is ignored.

[Simon]

Lab sessions need more structure and guidance

We will increase this in the remaining lab sessions, which are for the second coursework assignment on Automatic Speech Recognition.

There are already more detailed milestones for this assignment than the previous one, and we’ll link the lab session content closely to those. We will say in each lab session what the goal of the session is, and what you should be learning in it.

[Simon]

Classes are too fast-paced (and spend too long on introductions and basic material, then rush the harder material)

I will try to pace classes better, getting through the preliminaries more quickly to leave more time for the harder concepts.

I already assume that all students have completed the videos and essential readings ahead of class, and I will continue to do this.

(Only one respondent thought classes were too slow)

[Simon]

Lab instructions for the first assignment should contain examples of each type of mistake we are looking for

I gave live examples in the lab of each type of mistake, rather than write them in the instructions. I will not be adding these to the written instructions, because this assignment is deliberately exploratory to encourage you to develop your own understanding and not simply to follow a sequence of instructions in a prescribed order.

[Simon]

Expectations for the assignment should be more clear

Regarding the lab work: as noted above, I have designed this to be exploratory and only semi-structured. This is to complement other learning styles in the course (e.g., classes are much more structured).

Regarding the written lab report: yes, it is difficult to make expectations clear to such a diverse class where approximately half the students have mostly written essays in previous courses, whilst others have never written an essay. Marking for the first assignment takes this into account: there is flexibility in how you interpret the guidance provided and there is more than one way to get a high mark. We also provide lots of individual and class-wide feedback to help with the second assignment.

[Simon]

The forums are sometimes confusing and hard to navigate: there is a lot of content

This is inevitable to some extent, but I do take the following actions during the course, and between years, to maintain some order in the forums:

• editing student’s questions for clarity
• moving topics to the most relevant forum
• merging related topics

I don’t expect you to read every topic in the forums! Use the search function (there is a separate search box only for the forums, separate from the main site search). I also don’t mind duplicate questions – I will simply merge topics and point you to where the question was already answered.

[Simon]

Positive comments

Each of these points was made by at least 5 people:

The course is interesting

The course is well organised

The videos are helpful

The website is good

The topic map is useful

Several of you also said the tutors were good (and there were no negative points about them).

[Author]

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