Higher Nationals in Computing

The 2016-17 academic year is the first year of recruitment for the Higher National in Computing at Oaklands College. The course initially in September only had three enrollments, but that was built up to 10 by half term. That meant that some students joined quite late, and that most students had missed up to 7 sessions

There were also difficulties caused by staff shortages, so that a second tutor was not available to support the programme until December 2016. The tutor orginally scheduled to deliver Unit 1, left without notice, and an alternative tutor (Sampson) was scheduled to replace him, but due to staff shortages, never did.

Thus students started Unit 1 e-Commerce late (December), and did not have suitable input for Unit 10 HCI until December.

Student disatisfaction with the course came to a head after the First Impressions survey, and a large number of issues were identifed. Many of those have now been addressed, however students expectations of the class room and the resources of hardware and software have still not been met. Both staff and students were expecting better facilities based on the STEM initiative, and the Engineering Resource Centre which was successful in raising the quality of facilites for Engineering Students.

Student attendance was good for the first term of the course, but after the three week xmas break two more students withdrew from the course, and more than half of the remaining students were ill for various periods. This led to an attendance issue, which is being addressed by offering individual online sessions that the students can take at home.