Draft Agenda for Teaching Committee Meeting - 13 July 2001

  1. Uniform policy on our tutors giving private tutoring John Potter has suggested the following guidelines. Note in considering this, that tutors can in fact enter marks across the whole enrolment for a course, not just their own group.

    1. Private tutoring by our casual tutors is permitted.
    2. It must be declared to the Subject Admin, together with the names and Ids of students involved.
    3. No private tutoring of students in their own classes is permitted (so they should have no control over marks for their private students).

    John notes that point 3 is not a fail-safe against corruption, but that perhaps getting tutors to double check finalised marks will help there.

  2. School Standard for 6 UoC Courses. In a situation where the School is regularly adding several new members of academic staff, there is a potential for the academic standards of the School to change (to something better or to something worse). It is proposed that the TC should document current practices and review known deviations from them, in order to either incorporate the deviations which are seen as improvements, or to affirm standards where this is not the case.

  3. Course offerings and allocation for summer session.

  4. Selection and Training of Casual Tutors Casual tutors are selected only shortly before session starts, and little or no briefing is given to these students. One of our casual tutors has made the following suggestions, which would not only help the casual tutors feel more comfortable with their role, but would also help to ensure a better standard of tutoring:

    1. Tutors be selected soon after the results of the previous semester are known so that they can prepare themselves.
    2. A comprehensive briefing be given to tutors [including EEO/AA principles, OH&S issues].

    We should consider whether casual tutors should be given some training in training groups. Although the computing competencies of our casual tutorsas are high, their communication/training competencies might not be. Under the current circumstances, we could be open to accusations of not providing adequate tutoring for our students. [Thanks to Carroll Graham for this item.]

  5. Quality control: There have been reports of students getting through to third year having plagiarised every assignment that they submitted ("they don't even know how to declare a variable"). Perhaps it's time to consider making prac exams obligatory parts of certain courses (rather than leaving it to the lecturer), and/or having a standard for plagiarism detection.

  6. Advanced Graphics pilot course proposal is here.

  7. Standardised policy on supplementary exams: The School does have a policy on supplementary exams (see Yellow form under the heading "SUPPLEMENTARY ASSESSMENT POLICY"). However not everybody adheres to it. This issue was referred to the TC during the School Meeting of 11/7/01.

School of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052, AUSTRALIA
Phone:  +61 2 9385 6876
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