Resources for students
We provide a wide range of educational resources for students. Here are a few examples:
- Documents and resources to help you take a remote oral or written exam;
- Support documents for student teamwork: we have designed and produced a series of very short videos to answer the questions and difficulties encountered by students learning to work in a group;
- Math resources for students entering EPFL: students can download an e-book and test their math knowledge online.
- Resources to help first-year students acquire learning habits whose effectiveness and importance are confirmed by the results of scientific research.
Please note that we are happy to develop other resources upon request if these can benefit the entire EPFL student community, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Your teachers can use an online survey application such as the TurningPoint system from Turning Technologies LLC. This tool will allow you to be engaged and actively participate in the classroom by answering questions and polls. You can read the legal information here.
In order to familiarize beginning bachelor students with the level that is expected and taught in mathematics in the first year of studies we offer:
- the opportunity to download the book “Savoir-faire en Maths” a month before the beginning of the semester
- the opportunity to evaluate their own mathematical skills using on-line tests designed by EPFL mathematics teachers
In addition, the school also offers other resources, including the on-line course entitled Fonctions Trigonométriques, Logarithmiques et Exponentielles.
Effective group work is an important transversal skill for engineering students, and professional engineers. The videos and supplementary PDF resources below address common challenges and present useful strategies for working in student project groups. Please do use them yourself, and share them with your students.
Please note that these materials are exclusively in French.
Vidéos
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Que faire lors de la première réunion du projet ?
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Nous n’arrivons pas à prendre de décision – faut-il avoir un leader ? |
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Les heures passent en réunion mais on avance peu – comment être plus productif ? |
Comment former une équipe performante ? |
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Quels outils pour la communication, pour partager des fichiers au sein du groupe ? |
Untel fait des critiques non constructives – comment améliorer la dynamique de groupe ? |
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Untel est trop attaché à ses idées – comment lui faire comprendre que c’est un travail de groupe ? |
Nous avons un conflit de personnalité au sein du groupe – comment produire un projet de qualité quand même ? |
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Comment trouver de bonnes idées, créatives et exploitables ? |
Untel rend un travail de mauvais qualité – comment gérer cette situation ? |
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L’échéance finale s’approche et les tensions montent – comment faire face ? |
Documents pour aller plus loin… avec les stratégies concrètes
| Écoute active | Résolution de conflit |
| Brainstorming + | Gestion de projet |
| Décisions + | Gestion de réunion |
| Développement d’un groupe | Étapes de conception d’un poster |
| Outils collaboratifs |
Vidéos 2014
| Développement d’un groupe | |
| Un projet en conception | |
| Contribuer aux travaux de groupe |
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In EPFL we are committed to continuing to improve the quality of our courses. Hence, we ask students for feedback on their courses in a number of ways:
- All courses have a short indicative feedback during week 5 each semester
- All courses also get more detailed in-depth feedback at the end of the semester or after the exam.
How does the short indicative feedback work?
To complete the indicative feedback, students simply log on through the secure and confidential IS-academia environment (https://isa.epfl.ch/imoniteur_ISAP/!etuevalreponses.htm) using your GASPAR ID.
Once you login to your student portal you will arrive on the ‘Home’ Tab. On the right of the home tab is the ‘useful links’ box. In that box you will find the ‘Indicative feedback (Ba/Ma)’ link. This link will bring you to the course feedback forms.
The short indicative feedback consists of only one question per course (‘The running of the course enables my learning and an appropriate class climate’), plus an opportunity to leave comments.
Please note that comments will be most useful if they are respectful and ‘actionable’: a comment which states simply ‘this course is bad’ or ‘this course is great’ is not very helpful; your feedback should indicate what you feel is good about the course and what can be improved.
Who gets to provide indicative feedback?
Teachers of all Bachelor, Master and CMS courses get indicative student feedback every semester. External students, taking courses at EPFL, will be able to provide feedback as long as they are correctly registered. UNIL students taught in the same classes as EPFL students will also participate (other UNIL students will have a separate opportunity for feedback). PhD students will be able to give feedback on the master courses they are following, but courses of the Doctoral School are dealt with through another procedure.
Is the feedback anonymous?
Students are not identified in the feedback report that is provided to teachers, to sections or to management. Furthermore, to protect student confidentiality, the results are only shown when more than 5 answers are available. Students are responsible for ensuring that they do not write their comments in a way that allows themselves to be identified (e.g. by recounting an event that involved only one or a small number of people).
In the case of criminally abusive or threatening comments, anonymity cannot be guaranteed.
What happens to the indicative feedback students provide?
Feedback goes first to the teacher. The teacher should then discuss the feedback with your class, and decide what actions they would like to take to improve the course.
The section that offers the course can also see the indicative feedback.
We appreciate the time and effort which students put into providing useful feedback to their teachers. If you have any questions about the indicative feedback system, please ask your class delegate or section adjoint. If you have any technical questions about the operation of the feedback within IS-Academia, please contact [email protected].
Towards the end of every semester you, as a student, will be asked to provide in-depth feedback on each of your courses. These questionnaires have been designed to get your opinions on multiple aspects of your learning experience.
How to provide the feedback
To provide the in-depth feedback, log on to your Moodle page (see figure below) during week 13 of the semester. You will see a list of the courses for which the evaluations are currently open. Please note that you might not see all your courses there. This is because some course evaluations will open at a later date, or your teacher might have decided to administer them on paper.
Most of the questions will be objective statements (Likert scale strongly disagree to strongly agree), and you will also have the opportunity to provide some comments. Please note that comments will be most useful if they are respectful and ‘actionable’: a comment which states simply ‘this course is bad’ or ‘this course is great’ is not very helpful; your feedback should indicate what you feel is good about the course and what can be improved.
Logistics about the feedback
- All the EPFL Ba/Ma students and UNIL students in the same classes, will get an opportunity to give feedback on all their courses.
- All the feedback provided to the teacher is completely anonymous and will not be linked to your identity. However, in the case of criminally abusive or threatening comments, anonymity cannot be guaranteed.
What happens to the in-depth feedback
The aggregated and anonymised feedback goes to the teacher and to the section providing the course. Based on the feedback specific actions may be taken and additional support might be provided to the teacher to help improve the course for the next semester.
Your feedback is really important and will help improve the teaching and learning process at EPFL, so please take the time to give your honest and detailed opinion.