The University of New South Wales

Notice of Meeting



A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Education Committee (CSE Education Committee 17/3)
was held at 12:00pm on Friday, 28 July 2017, in Room 103 (HoS Meeting Room), Computer Science Building.

Enquiries concerning these minutes should be directed to John Shepherd, extension +61293856494, jas@cse.unsw.edu.au.

John Shepherd
Committee Chair

Minutes

    Present: John Shepherd (chair), Maurice Pagnucco (MP), Brad Heap (BH), Wen Hu (WH), Jashank Jeremy (JJ), Eric Martin (EM), Helen Paik (HP)
    Apologies: Fethi Rabhi
    Absent: Alan Blair (AB), Annie Guo (HG),
      Present / Quorum:   5 / 6   (quorum not reached)

  1. Apologies and Welcome


  2. Minutes of Previous Meeting *

    CSE Education Committee 17/2 (5 May 2017)


  3. Business from Previous Meeting

    To Do:

    • check proposed pre-reqs; still need to update in AIMS (ongoing)
    • investigate what other Universities do for Hons (ongoing)
    • how many people transfer from 4-year to 3-year degrees simply to graduate (ongoing)
    • investigate changing dual-badged courses to hybrid
    • develop induction package for new (casual) academic staff
      • ran induction workshop for new casual academics
      • probably should have gotten all casual academics along
    • develop FAQ for all academic staff (ongoing)

    Lab-based exams:
    • encourage lecturers to run exams in the Labs
      • discussed advantages: no dead trees, no bags of papers
      • disadvantages: cost; potentially having central invigilators for 2 hour exams
      • disadvantages: limitied lab seats (~350), corralling works (more or less)
      • JJ: mentioned some invigilator problems with COMP1911.17s1 prac exam
      • MP: will chase this up with central exams
      • other aspects of in-lab exams
        • Paper can be done up to the day of!
        • Multiple choice: tools work; readily automarkable.
        • Short answer: tools work.
        • Long answer: plain text
        • Diagramming tools: tbc for cs1531.17s2; something will happen in the browser.
        • Maths: probably a word processor.
      • discuss lab-based exams in a future School meeting

  4. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

    John Shepherd will report on any interesting/relevant devlopments that have occurred in committees, work-groups, etc. at UNSW.


  5. UNSW3+ Developments

    Offering schedules:

    • jas brought offering schedules last meet
    • Program tweaks: cs2511 in t2/t3 , not t1/t3
    • too many do not want to teach in t2 because of the conference window

    Program schedules:

    • suggested ordering for students
    • slightly weird course codes, ordering
    • programs probably will work OK
    • PGC will only need three things for first session, not four is helpful
    • somewhat more flexibility across the board
    • still draft

    Course templates:

    • Feedback to jas: everyone wanted the same number of lecture hours
    • Consensus: 9x4=36 hours of lectures, across 2+2 slots.
    • Likely problematic for PgC who "from time immemorial" have had 3h slots
    • Timetabling: 10 weeks of lectures, punch out a week for some other use.
    • Status quo for stuff outside lectures:
    • first years get 1:2 TLBs
    • others: keep on keeping on
    • Thought required for updating tutorials and labs, scheduling assignments
    • no midsem break maybe use the punched-out week as a quiet week?
    • the Dean wants us to cut down on lectures in favour of "innovative things"
      (and wants to cut back on labs! we need more labs!)
    • BH: all this takes the experts out, and relies on students to help each other outâ

  6. Review of 17s1 Teaching and Assessment

    • HUGE courses (e.g. COMP1511 ~850)
    • myExperience:
      • better results than 16s1; close to Faculty average
      • BUT two CSE courses ranked lowest in Faculty
    • assessment for COMP6443 was a mess, then delayed entry of final marks
    • issue with new courses:
      • no pre-reqs for some courses; not automatically copied from AIMS
      • following courses for new early core need to consider new core content

  7. Program Revision: 5543 Graduate Certificate in IT

    EM discussed proposal to revise 5543 Grad Dip to ensure that students took appropriate courses that would allow them to easily upgrade to8543 MIT.


  8. School-wide policy for Supp Exams?

    No serious discussion on this point.


  9. Any Other Business

    MP presented some info on plans for Co-op under UNSW3+

    • email from Co-op: squeeze the co-op course into 3y for BSc
    • Ian Skinner: Management+Ethics/PI+Ethics delivered in a placement
    • is there something during a placement that could substitute a course?
      • would need serious hands-on project during placements
      • could substitute: Design studio? Special project? Capstone project?
      • Ethics covers stuff that won't be taught in a placement
        (BH: No company will ever teach you how to whistleblow)
      • replace Thesis if they actually build stuffâ
    • Friction with other students who don't lose a capstone project
    • Co-op students already get a pretty good deal: insurance, benefits,
    • InfoSys have had UoC for internships

    JAS to discuss further with wenh/xcao


    10. The meeting closed at 1:20pm.