Minutes of the Teaching Committee Meeting on 26 August 2005

1. Confirmation of minutes of the last two teaching committee meetings.
• The minutes were confirmed.
  
2. Courses to be run  in 2006. This list was circulated at the meeting.
   
• It was suggested to consider to offer COMP2411 also to third year students, to generate higher enrolment and to offer more choices in third year.
• the case to revive COMP9514 Advanced Decision Theory was presented by Arthur Ramer.
• It was agreed that SENG9338 is not essential to be offered in the future.
  
3. Teaching load formula - initial brainstorming. As a starting point, the info on teaching load formulas from Monash University was circulated.
   
• Wayne Wobcke gave a brief run-down of the teaching load formula used during his time at Sydney Uni.
  
• A general discussion developed about the value and potential problems with a teaching load formula. The goal of the formula is to balance the duties among all academics as best as possible, while taking into account the activites in all three areas, teaching, research and administration. It was noted that caps are probably desriable that limit the extent to which on area of duty can compensate for a lack of duties in another area. E.g. a productive researcher should probably still need to teach to some extent. What is this extent? It is planned to continue the discussion on the teaching load formula by circulating some rough draft and to refine it over the next two months by multiple open discussions.
  
4. Plagiarism Policy - what next?
• This item was postponed to a later Teaching Committee meeting.