Last updated 14.01.09

2009 Re-enrolment Guide
for Second and Later Year Software Engineering Students

Important: Students enrolling in second year: it is best to do COMP1911 in S1 and COMP2121 in S2.

You might like to read the page on Software Engineering and The Meaning of Life.

It is also strongly recommended that you look at the Software Engineering FAQ

Please see important and confusing recent course changes

FAQ

How Program and Course Revision Affects You

Revision is not retrospective

Revisions have an effect from the date of the revision and in general are not intended to be retrospective.

The basic idea is that you are completing the program as it was when you initially enrolled in the program.

Unfortunately, problems can occur due to uncompleted courses that are no longer available.

The following discussion should help resolve most problems.

The following tables shows course requirements as a function of year of initial enrolment.

Initial Enrolment before 2004

Initial Enrolment 2004-2005

Initial Enrolment from 2006

Initial Enrolment from 2008

Course Substitutions

As a consequence of revisions some courses are no longer available.

The following table shows the appropriate subsitutions.

Please particularly note changes for 2008.

The following changes apply from 2008.

NS Speak Terminology: programs, courses, plans

Terminology changes

What were courses are now programs: for example, the Software Engineering Program; and subjects are now courses: for example, the SENG2010 course.

Course units

course load is measured in Units of Credit (uoc). Courses are generally either 6uoc or 3uoc. A normal full-time load is 24uoc per semester. The normal workload expectation is 25-30 hours per semester for each unit of credit, including class contact hours, preparation and time spent on all assessable work.

Plans

Plans identify areas of study within other areas. For example, BE(SE)/BSc has plan SENGA13651; BE(SE)/BA has plan SENGA13652. Within the BE BA a major in Chinese Studies would be CHINA13652. The BE(SE)/MCom is handled by a plan, not a course, SENGC13648.

Progression

Do I have to take a course in the session and stage shown in the published program?

Progression in Software Engineering, and many other programs, is by courses and not stages. This means that there is no requirement to complete stage before commencing courses at stage . The prime requirement is to satisfy pre- and co-requisites.

Programs are laid out in stages to demonstrate that there is at least one ordering of the courses that will lead to completion, but that order is not mandatory. So, you don't have to take a course exactly where it is shown in the published program; you are free to move courses around. To complete a BE in Software Engineering, you must complete 192uoc and satisfy the core and elective requirements of the program.

Of course the stages shown in the (virtual) handbook (and here) provide a convenient sequence for progressing through the program. Also, changes from the ``standard'' program may result in timetable clashes.

Can I overload?

The program says, ``3uoc of gened in semester 2'', but I'd like to do 6uoc. Is that possible?

Yes, that is perfectly OK, and part of the exercise of adapting the program to fit your preferences and desires.

We allow overloading by 3uoc without question. If your WAM is 65+, you may obtain permission to overload by 6uoc or more. You should, of course, be aware that you are overloading, and be careful to ensure that you are handling the load.

Stage 3 and 4 electives

Stage 3 and 4 electives consist only of SE professional electives. They do not provide for free electives of the type given in stages 1 and 2.

See SE-Electives for a list of possible electives.

Stage 2 enrolment

It is important that COMP2111 and INFS2603 are done before or concurrently with SENG2010. SENG2010 has a co-requisite of COMP2111 and INFS2603.

Stage 2 for Mid-Year Entry Students

Depending on what you enrolled in in stage 1, and whether you did any courses during the Summer Semester, mid-year entry students may have difficulty enrolling in a standard stage 2 program.

It is important that you enrol in courses that enable smooth progress in the future. This means that you should aim:

• to complete SENG2010 & SENG2020 during stage 2, or the workshops will be delayed for a year.
• to complete COMP2011 during stage 2, or most COMP SE-electives will be blocked because of prerequisites.

Semester 1

You should enrol in

	COMP2111
	SENG2010
	INFS2603

then, if you have not already taken them, you should add

	COMP1921
	MATH1081

Note: COMP1921 (or COMP1021) is a prerequisite of COMP2111, but because it is important for you to do COMP2111 and SENG2010 we are happy to relax this requirement to a corequisite. In this case you will need special permission to complete your enrolment.

If you have done COMP1021 you would add

COMP2111

then you would consider adding

Semester 2

You should enrol in

	SENG2020
	COMP3710
	MATH2859
	COMP2011 if not already taken
	COMP2021

and then add 9uoc or 15uoc of Stage 2 free elective and/or General Education.

Combined and Fast Track Programs

Combined programs

Combined programs merge the course contents of to satisfy the requirements for two degrees in a shorter time than would be the case if the programs were taken sequentially.

Combined programs available within BE(SE) are:

• with Science, BE BSc (Program 3651, Plan SENGA3651)
• with Arts, BE BA (Program 3652, Plan SENGA3652)
• with Commerce, BE BCom (Program 3653, Plan SENGA13653)
• with BiomedE, BE MBiomedE (Program 3728, Plan SENGA3728)

For information on combined programs, please see the SE Programs page. Applications for transfer to combined programs should be directed to the Program Director.

For information on transferring to combined programs, please see the Transfer page.

Final Year Thesis

See Final Year Thesis for a discussion of choosing a thesis topic and what is involved in completing your thesis.

You should enrol in SENG4910, Thesis A, and SENG4911, Thesis B.

SENG4921: Professional Issues and Ethics

SENG4811: Any references to SENG4811, in old documentation, should be replaced by SENG4921.

Please note: SE students must enrol in SENG4921, not COMP4920.

How is CSE Stage Weighted Average computed?

For determination of grades of honours, CSE currently uses a stage weighted average. In this determination the stage of the course, not the year you did the course, is used, in addition to units of credit, to compute a WAM.

All courses completed, except any that were paid for as voluntary courses, are counted towards the WAM, even if they were not necessary for the program. General education courses are weighted 1, and other courses are weighted according to their stage, for example COMPnxxx courses have weight n, except if n is 9. In the latter case, the course COMP9xxx has weight 3 if it is equivalent to a COMP3xxx course, otherwise it has weight 4. More information can be found at http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/people/studentoffice/policies/wa/wa.html.

How is the Honours level determined?

The level of honours is determined from the CSE staged weighted average as follows:

WAM	Honours class
	Class 1
	Class 2, division 1
	Class 2, division 2

Industrial Training (IT)

Industrial Training. Students enrolled in the BE (Software Engineering) program must complete a minimum of 60 days industrial training, preferably but not essentially in the computing industry. The employment should be such as to expose students to the realities of industrial activities, problems and organisation and of working with others in an industrial or organisational environment. As a general rule this industrial experience should be gained in Australia and is usually undertaken in the vacations at the end of first, second and third year. Some industrial training may be undertaken with an overseas company of high repute. The onus will be on students gaining their industrial experience overseas to prove, by means of an authenticated report, that the work they did was of adequate standard and that it was obtained with a company or organisation of high repute.

IT used to have its own course code, SENG4903. This no longer exists.

Please see the Industrial Training page, and refer all questions to the IT Coordinator, Peter Ho.

Austudy recipients

Students receiving Austudy payments must be very careful unless they are following a standard program. The study load in any semester is measured by the proportion of units of credit taken compared to the year's standard program. Students whose study load falls below the minimum full-time figure of 0.375 in any semester are ineligible to receive Austudy. Payments made in such a semester may be required to be repaid, and students have in fact been asked to repay Austudy in the past. Ignorance of the rules is not considered sufficient excuse.

Note that extra courses taken in years 2 and 3 may result in the load for the final semester of year 4 falling below the minimum full-time equivalent value. For this reason requests to overload should not be made as the School office staff cannot predict whether Austudy eligibility might be affected some time later.

General Education

Please note: General education requirements are currently under review. The following currently applies:

to meet their 12 units of credit General Education requirement, students may take up to 12 units of General Education, or courses substituted for General Education, from any faculty or faculties, other than the faculty that is the authority for the program in which the student is enrolled.

See General Education

General Education Courses NOT Available to SE Students

Please see http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/undergrad/current/gened.html

General Education Substitution

It is permitted to satisfy up to 6uoc of the General Education requirement with courses that are not in the General Education program, but are outside the area of study of Software Engineering. Please see General Education Requirements in particular:

Restrictions and students' choices

In order to ensure that students have the maximum amount of choice possible in the courses that can be taken to fulfill the General Education requirement, all programs have agreed to allow students to select either:

• courses that were developed especially for the General Education Program (these courses are listed at the back of this Handbook and have a course identifier that begins GEN);
• a limited number of 'mainstream' courses that are offered in the degree programs of other faculties.

However, certain restrictions apply to students' choices:

Students may undertake a maximum of three units of credit from approved General Education courses within the faculty which is the program authority for the program in which that student is enrolled*. Further General Education courses may be drawn from any other faculties with a maximum of six units of credit to be drawn from any one faculty, other than the faculty that has the authority for the program in which the student is enrolled.

[IMAGE png] Please note: The Faculty of Commerce and Economics (FCE) has not approved General Education courses offered by FCE to be available to students enrolled in FCE degree programs.

Timetable Clashes

Students with broken programs (due to ill health or failures etc) may find that the courses they wish to do have timetable clashes. In such cases alternative classes may exist in the other programs or in evening lectures. Lectures with the same course number have identical standards and syllabi. Please Note: You will NOT be permitted to enrol in courses that clash, even if the clash is only one hour of lecture or tutorial.

Changing Course Enrolments

The University does not permit the replacement or addition of new courses after week 2 of semester, unless the student obtains a written statement from the Lecturer that the student has been attending class, laboratory and tutorials since the beginning of semester.

Repeated or Deferred Core Courses

Core courses failed or omitted from the normal program in one year must be included in the current program in the next year. NB Students are required to delete from their standard program, at least the same number of units of credit needed to complete the earlier course.

Old and new rules: applies only to students who enrolled before 2000

The Software Engineering Program was revised in 1999 and the revised program appears in the Standard Program page.

How do the new rules affect me?

We allow you to mix the old and new rules as follows:

Stage 1

if you enrolled in this stage under the old rules, then it should be completed according to those rules. Ignore the new rules for Stage 1.

Stage 2

if you enrolled in stage 2 under the old rules, then it should be completed according to those rules. Provided you do complete under the old rules, you are allowed to count 6uoc towards your stage 3 electives.

otherwise

In all other cases you may choose to proceed under the new rules, but you should consistently adhere to those rules, and not try to mix the rules.

For example, if you enrolled in stage 3 under the old rules then you probably have completed more level 3 elective courses than required under the new rules. You may assign the excess to satisfy the electives for stage 4.

To remind you what the old rules looked like, here are stages 1 & 2 under the old rules, but with loads shown in equivalent UoC

Academic Co-ordinators

The following staff members have particular responsibilities for aspects of the programs, and are available for advice on these matters:

Site maintained by webmistress@cse.unsw.edu.au
Please read the UNSW Copyright & Disclaimer Statement