Proposed change in prerequisites for BINFXXXX courses

The dedicated bioinformatics courses (code BINFXXXX) that were created
for the BE (Bioinformatics) program currently have no set prerequisite
outside of other BINF courses. This is a result of the fact that the
content of these courses was not well defined at the time of their
creation. Since then, BINF1001 (Bioinformatics 1) has been taught for
two years, and BINF2001 (Bioinformatics 2) has been taught once. The
content and assumed knowledge of these courses is now better defined and
would be beneficial to encode as course prerequisites. This would help
the students' enrolment and prevent students who do not have the assumed
knowledge for a course to enrol in it and slow down the rest of the class.

The specific proposed prerequisite and co-requisite changes are as follow:

For BINF1001 (Bioinformatics 1)
Prerequisite: COMP1011 (Computing 1A) or COMP1711 (Higher Computing
1A). This is necessary since BINF1001 has a major programming assignment
that uses the Haskell language, which is taught in Computing 1A.

For BINF2001 (Bioinformatics 2)
Prerequisites: BINF1001 (Bioinformatics 1) (the only current
prerequisite) + COMP1021 (Computing 1B) or COMP1721 (Higher
Computing 1B).

COMP1021/COMP1721 is necessary since a programming assignment in BINF2001
requires knowledge of C programming, which is taught in Computing 1B.

Co-requisite: COMP2041 (Software Construction: Techniques and Tools) +
   BIOC2201 (Principles of Molecular Biology (Adv)) or
   BIOC2281 (Fundamentals of Molecular Biology)

COMP2041 is necessary since the second programming assignment in BINF2001
requires Perl, which is taught in COMP2041. This can be waived if the
student demonstrates adequate proficiency in Perl or an equivalent
scripting language.

BIOC2201/2281 is necessary to ensure the students have adequate background
knowledge of molecular biology and understand the context of the approaches
they study in BINF2001.


These prerequisites and co-requisites are automatically satisfied
if the students follow the standard Bioinformatics (3647) program
outline. However in the past a few students have not followed this
outline and have been able to enrol in BINF courses without the necessary
knowledge, especially of programming. This has caused problems both for
them and their fellow students as class progress had to be slowed down
to accommodate them.

A longer-term consideration is the fact that the bioinformatics courses
could eventually be opened to non-bioinformatics engineering students
as electives in the Science program. If this is the case, the required
knowledge for the courses should be well defined so that science students
who take the bioinformatics course are able to complete it, and that
science students without the necessary computing background cannot enrol.