Report on TPG course, 2001-02
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This year's TPG course has recently concluded. Within a week or so, I
expect to have all the marks in from the TPG exam, and to circulate a
summary of the results on all courses to students and their supervisors.

Overall I feel that this year the first term was a great success, while the
second term was less satisfactory. In the first term we ran more or less
the usual selection of core courses (some of them updated in content), in
which all the students participated with enthusiasm. A larger than usual
number of visitors and other hangers-on also contributed to the success of
the courses. In addition, at the beginning of the first term I held a short
individual meeting with each student and their supervisor, to discuss their
selection of courses in relation to their planned research programme. I
feel this was well worth doing and helped to give a more "personalized"
feel to the course - even though in almost all cases the recommendation was
"you should do all the core courses". I believe this exercise helped
students to see the value of the courses they were doing and had a
significant psychological effect on the group ethos; I hope I (or my
successor) will continue this practice next year.

The second term was unsatisfactory because I had difficulty in persuading
enough people to offer courses on their specialist areas (or else I did not
try hard enough, or more likely was not organized far enough ahead).
Moreover, all the courses that did run were heavily biased towards hardcore
theory and did not represent a balanced selection. The consequence was that
two of the students (Jennifer and Alin) did not feel it was worth their
while taking any of these courses, and (hence) did not sit the exam.  I'm
not sure how much of a problem this was. I think that both these students
felt that the first-term courses were "both necessary and sufficient" for
their needs, and they were happy to devote the time in the second term to
their research interests in any case. On the other hand, I would have
preferred to have at least *offered* a wider and more balanced choice of
courses.

My vision for the TPG course, in any case, is that the second-term courses
should be more spontaneous and opportunistic, varying from year to year and
reflecting the current research interests of the people who happen to be
around. Perhaps we can discuss 

  (a) what can be done to make it easier to persuade people to offer courses? 
  (b) should students be forced to take a quota of optional courses 
      irrespective of whether the courses on offer match their own interests?

John Longley, 26 June 2002