First and Second Year Syllabus Working Group

Outline of Syllabus Changes

Faculty applications

Higher versions
COMP1917 Higher Computing 1 - approval form
COMP1927 Higher Data Structures and Algorithms - approval form

Expanded statement of textbook and library requirements.

Summary

The syllabus change has four objectives:

1. To more closely match the order in which material is presented in the core CSE subjects and material taken by EE (and possibly CE students) in COMP1091 and COMP2???. So that students in the common first year program will be able to study alongside computing majors not in the program (eg BSc Comp and SEng students). So that students will be able to move between the programs without duplicating or missing important content. So that we can reduce the (currently high) number of distinct subjects taught in first year.
2. To increase the integration between our first three courses (currently each works largely in isolation)
3. To update the content coverage to reflect developments in discipline of computer science and engineering since the current courses were initially proposed. In particular to increase the emphasis on objected oriented programming and to introduce material on objected oriented design by the end of second year.
4. To increase the emphasis on a discipline of design in computing which follows on from and supports the skills acquired in the new first year faculty design course.

The new subjects

The new syllabus involves replacing our first three subjects 1011, 1021, 2011 with three new subjects 1911, 1921, 2911. (DSS and Software Construction are not part of the new syllabus and will remain in their current form unchanged.)

A rough summary of the changes is:

1021 -> 1911
2011 -> 1921
1011+2011 -> 2911

Essentially, material in the first three computing courses our majors see (COMP1011 Computing 1A, COMP1021 Computing 1B, and COMP2011 Data Organisation) has been redistributed amongst three new courses ( COMP1911 Computing 1, COMP1921 Data Structures and Algorithms, and COMP2911 Design in Computing 2) which will replace them.

1. 1911 - the first course, is C programming
2. 1921 - the second course, is Data Structures and Algorithms. It does not include the OO programming from 2011, it does introduce ADTs.
3. 2911 - the third course, is software design (called Engineering Design for funding reasons), it does oo design and algorithm design.

The first year faculty design subject

From 2006 there will be a new faculty design course (not addressed here). This will be core for CE and elective for comp sci, binf, and seng. Computing students taking this course will do group project work including interfacing with hardware - using equiptment like the lego microcontrollers.

Higher Versions

The are higher versions of 1911 and 1921. Whether or not we actually run the higher version of COMP1921 will depend on student numbers, school funds, and the diversity of students taking 1921.

EE students

The new sequence means that EE students will be able to take the same first two subjects as our own majors, which is important if we are to retain them in our subjects. Initially they'll still use the 1091 2??? course codes but 1091 will just be 1911 rebadged and share the same lectures, assessment, etc.

The Transition

1911 will first run 06s1

1921 will first run 06s2

2911 will first run 07s1

We won't run 1011/1711 after 2005.

The last offering of 1021 will probably be in session 1 2006, and the last real offering of Data Org will probably be in session 1 2006 also. We can treat COMP1921 as Data Org after that time for any students with COMP1021 who have not passed Data Org. If needed we can do the same thing for 1021 and 1911 in the transition period.

Prerequisites

We will need to change the prerequisites for our other courses to reflect the new course codes. This will happen after the new courses have been approved. An outline of the affected courses is shown on the course proposals. In general where a course currently has 1021 as a prereq 1921 will be a new prereq, and where a course currently has 2011 as a prereq 2911 will be a new prereq.