ACS11002

Feedback Emails sent to students after every assignment, as well as lectures giving general
feedback on some of the assignments.

ACS130

Feedback I use rubrics to mark students. I send emails to students with feedback, as well as
go through sample solutions during lectures.

ACS131

Feedback Students performed well, I am happy with the overall results.

ACS132/1321

Feedback performance as expected for a grading component

ACS133
Feedback Most of the students performed well while some of them were struggling with
the questions, in particular Q1 and Q2 from the Autumn Semester. The results of
Q3 are better than expected.

ACS230

Feedback Course work marks were good due mainly to the fact that students prepared well
during the Easter Break

Overall there were some good performances across the two (2) exam questions.

ACS231

Feedback I am proud of what the ACS231 students have learnt and achieved in this module.
This is reflected in the fact that over 35% of the students in this module achieved
a First, but most of all, in the robots that we have seen in the demo day. Best of
luck with your future mechatronics developments - it is a skill you can trust that
to have acquired.
 ACS232

Feedback The performance on the labs and quizzes indicates that a basic attainment
through the cohort of learning outcomes for the course.
The exam performance is patchy which aligns with the erratic engagement with
the lectures and tutorial exercises throughout the academic year.

ACS233

Feedback All students receive an email with personalised feedback after every assignment.

ACS234
Feedback Engagement with the quizzes in both S1 and S2 was good. Statistically, there was
slightly higher variance in grades in S2 when compared to S1. I was very happy
with the performance for some of the harder questions in S2.
Overall students performed well. Some students found Q1 on the probability and
statistics elements of the course challenging. It was typical for students to choose
to answer this question last even though it appears as the first question in the
exam. In particular many students found calculating the variance of a continuous
distribution challenging.

ACS321
Feedback The exam is designed to mainly assess the advanced objectives. I am very happy
with the performance of your class in both the exam and the course works. Well
done.

ACS330

Feedback In general, all the groups did well this year and it was great to be back in face to
face which is very important for this module. Detailed feedback for each
assignment have been provided to the groups and individuals.

ACS340
Feedback Good engagement with this task. Many groups presented innovative ideas and
demonstrated good level of technical understanding. There was excellent peer
engagement with many good questions from the audience.

Overall good performance. In Q2 one particular challenge was recalling the

materials used in standard (rigid) versus soft electronics. In Q3 there were some
valuable ideas regarding ethics in bioelectronics research.

ACS341

Feedback During marking the examsheets, I noticed that there were a lot of examsheets
that did not have much text on it. These scored poorly thereby reducing the
exam average.

ACS342
Feedback The coursework for this module was the threshold assessment (TA) test.
Candidates generally performed well on this test, most passing at the first
attempt; in fact, more than half (57 students) achieved a grade of 25/30 or more,
ten students achieved 28/30 or more, and one student achieved a perfect score.

The final examination for this module was the graded assessment (GA) paper.
Candidates had one hour to answer a more challenging, open-ended question
from a choice of two.

In Q1, candidates had to analyse a given block diagram of a proportional

feedback control system and a set of describing ODEs to, firstly, produce a
system model and then analyse its stability and performance w.r.t. a given
specification. The general level of attempts was poor because students struggled
with the first part of the task. It seemed that a lot of time was spent on trying to
distil, unsuccessfully, a transfer function for analysis from the ODEs and block
diagram, leaving insufficient time or inclination for the subsequent analysis. The
lack of basic skills on display was disappointing: many did not know how to deal
with a time-domain model (i.e. how to convert it to a transfer function model).
Some tried to reverse engineer a transfer function model from the provided pole
data, even though the model was given and just required transforming! Many
could not deal with the presence of two inputs, even though the question stated
that one input (the reference) was equal to zero, and therefore the disturbance-
to-output transfer function was the one of interest.

Q2 was answered better, generally, but only around 25% of candidates

attempted it. I put this down to Q2 being more focused on the content from the
 second half of the module, including after Easter. The main issue that arose was
again around modelling: candidates were generally not comfortable with
inferring performance from frequency response data (post-Easter content) and
instead tried to identify a transfer function model from the provided Bode
diagram.

ACS402

Feedback The course cohort demonstrated a range of potential solutions to a single

industrial situation. The use of industrial approaches allowed for all of the teams
to develop solutions broadly meeting the project requirements. The use of
experimental setups, distributed simulation, project management techniques
and contingency planning have all been deployed to deliver to the original
technical scope. Individuals and teams well appreciated the industrial problem
statement and continuously improved their performance through the course.
Good technical evaluation and development were demonstrated and future work
was well considered on gaps. Key learning for some teams was the need to
adapt to change and challenges through the course of the development. Areas
of improvement include the consideration of increased workload towards the
end of the module, a range of key stakeholders (and associated technical
requirements) in the proposed solutions, and critical reflection of the project
processes and outcomes. A number of self reflections highlighted the
appreciation that not everything is certain in the real world and needs to be
adapted to in the course of a project development.

ACS6106

Feedback The performance in the exam has been patchier than expected but the overall
achievement of LOs is satisfactory when combined with the coursework
components.

ACS6121

Feedback Q1, Q2 and Q4 were generally done well: Q1 and Q2 were similar to past
questions, while Q4 was similar to questions assessed on the BB quizzes.

Q3 was not answered well in fhe main. Many candidates did not realize that the
gain K_3 could be readily deduced from the provided matrix, let alone K_2.
 In Q5 the first part of the question was generally OK but the vast majority did not
manage to perform the correct adjustment of the constraints; more provided
constraints on the reference than on the actual state variables.

Q6 was not answered well at all, save for a few students. In (a), few seemed to
realize that the issue with Q = C'C is that it is only positive semidefinite and
therefore the cost may not be sufficiently informative about the states. A lot of
candidates selected correct answers in (b) but provided spurious
explanations/justifications. Quite a few did not even attempt part (c) despite it
being similar to a tutorial sheet question.

Q7 was generally better. Again, similar to Q3, quite a few failed to realize that the
stability of the system in part (a) is easily checked by extracting the first row of
the matrix and calling this K_N.

ACS6124

Feedback Detailed feedback on the assignments has been already provided to each student
individually.

ACS6131

Feedback In general, students did very well in the lab and demonstrated the knowledge
gained in the lab and lectures in the final assignment.

ACS61010

Feedback To pass the module, students were required to demonstrate their ability to use
taught methods in simple cases. The typical reasons for failing the exam were:
inability to solve simple ODEs, unconfident calculation of derivatives, lack of
understanding of how to derive the boundary conditions. A significant group of
students (~7 people) came very close to solving the last, most challenging
problem.