Department of Computer Science
Industrial Year
Teaching Industrial Year

Academic Supervisor Visits

For students based at UK employers we normally expect to visit each student at the employer site twice during the placement. For students working overseas we will try and visit once if possible, using Skype (etc) to supplement visits as appropriate. The Academic Supervisor will usually request that the student organises the visits on a mutually convienient date. This will ideally be near the start and end of the placement, but is subject to the availability of those involved. We require the Line Manager or whoever is normally responsible for the supervision of the student to be available for discussion at some point during the visits. Each visit will normally require 1-2 hours.

Assessment

40% of the assessment for the year is derived from the employer, and it is therefore important that an assessment is sent to cs-iy-admin@aber.ac.uk with a copy to the student's Academic Supervisor (who will have visited) when the student finishes their placement or by the end of August at the latest. We kindly request all assessment forms to be returned no later than the end of August (even if the student continues to work for a period of September) to allow for the IY assessment to be confirmed in time for student to progress to the final year. Completing an Employers Assessment questionnaire Form (EAF) will provide all the information we need and is available below:

Please fill as many comments in the free format text areas as you feel is appropriate and discuss with the Academic Supervisor if necessary. If possible please export/save the completed form as a pdf file before sending via email.

Employers are welcome to provide alternative assessments or apprasals if more convienient, however an indication of the final grade to be awarded selected from the list on the form would be extremely helpful.

Employers are welcome to allow the student to see the completed form particularly if it contains information or feedback that may be of benefit to the student, however they may choose not to do so, and the department will not normally provide the contents of the form to the student.

Learning Objectives

Employers must ensure that they satisfy the responsibilities specified in the Guide for employers; and in particular that students are given the opportunity to satisfy the required learning objectives. The objectives are broad and should pose no problem for any student employed at a suitable (pre-graduate) level.

Problems

Students currently on placement will have been allocated an Academic Supervisor who will be an academic member of the department and should normally be the first port of call for queries related to a specific student. The student should be aware of who their Academic Supervisor is and have passed this information on to their line manager at the start of the placement. Should this not have happened, or if the academic supervisor is unavailable, or in the case of urgent or sensitive issues, please contact cs-iy-admin@aber.ac.uk or the Industrial Year Coordinator (nns@aber.ac.uk):

Dr. Neal Snooke
Department of Computer Science
Aberystwyth University
Penglais
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion SY23 3DB

Tel. 01970 621782