The faculty listened

Thank you!!!

At last the faculty have listened to teh students (well actually that's what we think they have done). In their words, they have changed the way that we pick our teaching programme for the next two years due to their ongoing process of improvement. Well since we have been campaigning for it for 2 years, i guess we can let them think it is their idea.

You may wonder what this revolution is. It is ranking.

Yes we may have done to get into, and out of, medical school for several years, but now we can do it to choose SSM and cohort booking.
Their email says

Due to the recent problems with the SSM2 booking process for SSMs, we have proposed that the "first-come, first-served" booking systems should be replaced with "ranked preference booking systems."

The "ranked preference approach" is preferred, and is fair in that:

• no student is disadvantaged by not being able to access a terminal at a particular point in time.
• a real-time indication can be given of how people are making first choices to assist in the process.
• there is a short cooling off period (1 week) where students can change their preferences (until booking is closed)
• all matching of requests to places is done using the same standard advanced matching algorithm.

When applied to the recent SSM2, over 75% of students got first or second choice.

So basically the old system failed and the computer lost all the results so we have adopted the idea that the students suggested in 2004, and which is in fact the one we used until 2003, using bits of paper.