Report evaluation Quartile 4 2007-2008 - SNT

Report evaluation Quartile 4 2007-2008
Study period Quartile 4, 2007-2008
Phase
M
Report date 2 August 2008
Reporter EVAcom Christel van Dijk
Overall appreciation 7.3
The master evaluation committee of the master IDE has evaluated the master program of
quartile 4 by means of a questionnaire on the Internet. The questionnaire was send to 92
students and 24 students completed it; the response is 26%.
The master programme of quartile 4 is appreciated with the overall mark of 7.3.
The relevance and offer of optional subjects scored more than satisfactory, although D&S
students are more satisfied than MOPD students. The spread of study load scored
insufficient and more than half of the students was not able to do the things he or she wished
to do this quartile.
Recommendations
The evaluation committee made some recommendations for improvement of quartile 4,
based on the results of the evaluation:
• Consider to move some courses to another quartile, to spread the offer of optional
subjects more evenly over the year
• The instructors of the different courses of quartile 4 should discuss together their
planning and deadlines to make the study load better spread over the quartile
Summary
The students overall appreciated the quartile more than satisfactory (7.3) and also the
relevance is more than satisfactory (7.5). However, a difference does exist between the
opinion of the Design & Styling students and the Management of Product Development
students. The D&S students appreciated the quartile and the relevance both as good (7.8
and 8.0), while the MOPD students judged the quartile as sufficient (6.4) and the relevance
as more than satisfactory (7.1). Probably the difference is caused by the fact most of the
optional courses are D&S courses instead of MOPD courses.
Optional courses
The offer of optional courses is considered as good (7.6); a difference between the opinion
of D&S students (8.0) and MOPD students (6.7) is visible here too. Four students (all D&S)
suggest moving some optional courses to other quartiles:
“Too much interesting optional courses in the 4th quartile, compared to the other
parts of the year”
Study load
The students were asked to judge the spread of study load; they considered the load as not
evenly spread (5.0). Some students also remarked this:
“Because all courses kind are planned simultaneously it is almost impossible to finish
all of them within the correct deadlines”
Besides judging the spread of the study load, the students were able to choose between two
statements:
• I was able to finish all courses I planned to do this quartile
• I was not able to do the things I wished to do this quartile

A majority of the students seemed not been able to do the things he or she wished to do.
There is no clear correlation between particular courses and the answer on this question.
Also remarks were made about the study load. About a fifth of the respondents complained
about the quartile being very busy:
“Very, very busy and chaotic.”
“Had to work all the evenings and weekends to finish everything properly.”
Facts
An overview of the scores of all respondents and respondents per master track is given in
the table below. Because only 2 ETD students filled in the questionnaire, only the scores of
the D&S and MOPD students are presented separately. The scores of all respondents are
also visualized in the graph.
Average results All D&S MOPD
# respondents 24 12 9
Overall appreciation 7,3 7,8 6,4
Spread of study load 5,0 4,8 4,9
Relevance for master track 7,5 8,0 7,1
Offer of optional courses 7,6 8,0 6,7
Choice of statement that fits best:
• I was able to finish all courses I 10 (42%) 6 (50%) 4 (44%)
planned to do this quartile
• I was not able to do the things I
wished to do this quartile
14 (58%) 6 (50%) 5 (56%)
Graph
• The overall appreciation is asked on a 1 to 10 scale.
• The other questions are asked on a 1 to 5 scale and multiplied by 2 to a 1 to 10 scale.
• The vertical lines in the graph are a representation of the deviation.

Comparison with previous year
In the graph, the scores of this year are compared to the scores of previous year. The overall
appreciation is still more than satisfactory, the same as the relevance. The offer of optional
courses clearly improved during the last two years.