Bill

I will not be able to attend the TC meeting but I would like to flag my interest in introducing a series of course COMP2911 & COMP3911 with the titles of Problem Solving I & II. I will appreciate if you circulate with the other items to solicit comments on the need for teaching such material in our undergraduate programs.

As the numbers suggest, the courses resemble the thesis course COMP4911 in their objective of creating an environment for the students to develop the expertise of using their hardware and algorithmic knowledge into a functioning apparatus and/or software, together with appropriate testing and evaluation.

The motivation for introducing such courses is the need for students to develop such expertise over a period of time beyond that of COMP4911 and with a number of smaller-size and less-complex situations.

The proposal is to start with COMP3911 as

1. a 3rd year elective in 04s1

2. a tool to explore if one semester course is sufficient before venturing into the crowded waters of 2nd year courses.

3. a 3/6 units. Naturally the depth of the experience will depend on the number of units. In my view 6 is best. It is not impossible deliver a 3 unit course.

Required resources:

• available software and hardware compilers and the associated performance assessment tools.

The course will be conducted as a series of problem situations whose solutions require the use of algorithmic techniques or co-designs (in case of possible parallelism) to meet the required specifications.

I realize that I am not very specific at this stage, but this is also a flag raising part of the exercise.

Hossam
28 March 2003