Draft Agenda for Teaching Committee Meeting - 13 September 2002

  1. Proposed change of credit points for COMP9242 (back from 12uoc to 6 uoc). [Gernot Heiser-Manuel Chakravarty to speak to this proposal]

  2. Australian Computer Society accreditation for BSc CompSc and BE Soft Eng, maybe others

  3. Proposal: [Tim Lambert] Revue participation be counted against Gened requirements?

    After being a little involved in the revue, I think it is clear that putting on a revue clearly meets the goals of general education (and then some).

    I propose that it count for 6 uoc ungraded (so they get an SY result).

    To make sure that students who just help the revue a little don't get 6 uoc they don't deserve, students would have to make a statement of a couple of paragraphs stating what they did so we could assess the quantity of work and how well it fits the goals of general education.

  4. Java course for PGs [Paramesh & JAS]

  5. Future of COMP4001 now less necessary because of the changes to COMP2011 and introduction of Java. But students still want to learn C++ ...

  6. Prizes for top students

    It has been suggested that CSE should have prizes to be awarded to the top performing students in our Programs.

    Such awards would be an added incentive to our students to perform their best if they knew that there was a prize as well as satisfaction in getting excellent grades, thus helping CSE to produce the best IT Graduates in Australia.

    Furthermore, I propose that we have an Honour Board outside the Head of School office, on which every year we inscribe the name of the people in each stage with the highest Weighted Average. Recording a name for every stage would solve the problem of Programs of various lengths, and install a competitive feeling amongst early stage students to try to get their name recorded before they graduate.

    For both of these proposals, we would have a choice to either award the people at the echelon in each Program, or a single Dux of all our Programs combined. The awards could be conferred during our annual Graduation Dinner.

    Currently, CSE Programs include the following:

    3645 Computer Engineering
3648 Software Engineering
3647 Bioinformatics
3978 Computer Science
3651 Software Engineering/Science
3652 Software Engineering/Arts
3722 Computer Engineering/Arts
3726 Computer Engineering/Science
3728 Computer Engineering/Master of Biomedical Engineering
3731 Computer Engineering/Master of Commerce

  7. Tim Lambert: I want to change the way honours results are determined. Instead of the present arcane formula, I propose doing it on straight WAM:

    >=761st
    >=682/1
    >=622/2

    I looked at the last ten years of honours results and this system gives exactly the same results on all but two students.

    The 2/2 cutoff could be 65 (no honours student has ended up with less than a 65 WAM) but I think it is best to avoid giving a 3rd class unless the student really messes up badly.

  8. Quality control in teaching

    1. All core courses should be reviewed after each semester.
    2. Surveys separate from the university-wide surveys should be conducted and tabled at these reviews.
    3. There should be a forum for unfettered student discussion of which courses have in the past been well taught or not-so-well taught. Perhaps student experiences could even be published; other universities have course descriptions with previous student survey ratings in them.
    4. Teaching review should include tutors.

  9. IEAust re-accreditation for BE Soft Eng

  10. IEAust accreditation - development of a case for BE Bioinformatics

  11. Student comment on difficulty of obtaining IT - should we relax our conditions: I have another question I would like to ask you. This problem not only concerns me but other fellow Comp Eng. colleagues as well. We have difficulty finding Industrial Training (IT) and would like to see changes to some of the restrictions involved in IT. I know it is our responsibility to find IT, but with the economy nowadays, we are finding it harder and harder to get IT. It's also "catch 22". Without our degrees, no one is willing to offer jobs, without a job we can't finish our degree... so what I'm proposing is that unpaid work should be allowed to count as IT as well or maybe IT does not have to be too strictly be in our field... something like that... So is it possible for such changes?

    Bill's thought: must be even tougher for students in other Engineering disciplines.

  12. Allocation of examination marking. It may be that the load ctee wants input from the TC in this regard, or maybe the other way around.

  13. Discussion of Program Transfer Process

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