The University of New South Wales

Notice of Meeting



A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Education Committee (CSE Education Committee 19/01)
will be held at 10:00am on Friday, 8th March 2019, in Room 103 (HoS Meeting Room), Computer Science Building.

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

John Shepherd
Committee Chair

Agenda


  1. Apologies and Welcome


  2. Minutes of Previous Meeting *

    CSE Education Committee 18/04 (5 October 2019)


  3. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

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

    • Special Consideration Handling

    • Late Enrolment Handling

    • Engineering 4th-year Thesis Structure

    • Students Viewing their Exam Submissions

    • Engineering Student Support Services

    • Term 2 Intake (starting 2020)

    • ASTRA - UNSW-wide SMS-like system


  4. 4th Year Theses

    The Faculty has adopted a new three-course sequence (Thesis A/B/C) for 4th year thesis. Each course is 4UC. Computer Science Honours is adopting a similar structure with three 6UC courses. The Faculty has now pusblished guidelines for Engineering theses; these provide some flexibility in how individual courses are assessed. How does CSE want to run these? What about CS Hons theses, which are not required to follow the Faculty guidelines.

    Faculty Thesis Rules and Procedures


  5. Enrolment Numbers

    Enrolment numbers continue to grow. UNSW is introducing new pathways to increase student numbers (Diploma, Term 2 intake, MoUs, ...).

    Popular courses no longer fit in any lecture theatre except Clancy. How should we arrange lectures to deal with this?

    Because of the number of students looking for options, we can no longer afford to run courses with enrolments < 100. And especially if the course is taught by a casual lecturer.

    Tutor and demonstrator costs are also blowing out due to the number of tutes and labs. Can we do without tutes in some courses, or can we make tutes larger? Could formal labs be replaced by 2-3 weekly "lab consultations"?


  6. UNSW3+

    How well are things progressing under the 10-week regime? Especially with setting courses up to "hit the ground running" in Week 1.

    Also, we need to look at course offerings. In particular, T3 has more courses than the other two terms. How to balance the number of courses per term over the three terms.

    JAS to report.


  7. Course Revision: COMP3411/9414/9814

    For the last few years, the UG and PG versions of the Artificial Intelligence courses (COMP3411 and COMP9414) have been combined. This has resulted in a very large course, combining two cohorts of (potentially) very different backgrounds (UG: 3-4 programming courses; PG: no programming). It seems useful to split the two cohorts again and teach the two courses appropriately for the cohort. The extended PG version (COMP9814) looks better suited to be co-taught with COMP3411. Do we need to reconsider pre-reqs for COMP9414?


  8. Course Revision: COMP4920/SENG4920

    The Ethics/ProjectManagement course has been reconfigured over the last few years so that it could be taught as two separate 3UC courses. Do we want to do this? Also, how to treat the EET and ChemEng Ethics courses; could they be alternatives to 4920 for students who cannot take 4920 in T3?


  9. Transfers from Old CS (3978) to new CS (3778)

    There has been some disquiet among students who decide to transfer from a combined XYZ/CS degree to a straight CS degree. This transfer requires moving froming from 3798 to 3778, which has different requirements.


  10. Summer Term

    In the summer of 2018/2019, we ran five courses. Two (COMP2521, COMP9024) ran under the "old" 8-week summer term. Three (COMP9331, COMP9414, COMP9511) ran primarily to service the needs of International Exchange students, in a 5-week term. Next summer, all courses will need to run in 5 weeks. Do we wish to run any courses in summer?


  11. School Assessment Review Committee

    CSE has had a "virtual" assessment committee for a number of years; we review mark distributions for courses and ask Convenors of courses with "unusual" distributions (e.g. more than expected FLs or HDs) to descibe how this occurred. This information is then conveyed to the Faculty Assessment Review Group. Other schools have formal committees where all Convenors meet and review mark distributions. The Faculty is asking all schools to give a Terms of Reference for their Assesment Review Committees. Does CSE need to change its practice in light of this?


  12. Students Viewing their Exam "Papers"

    The Faculty is in the early stages of proposing guidelines for students to examine their Exam papers. CSE currently has no policy on how this should be handled. Do we want a school-wide approach, or should it be left to individual course convenors?


  13. Any Other Business