The University of New South Wales

Notice of Meeting



A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Teaching Committee (CSE Teaching Committee 19/04)
will be held at 1:00pm on Friday, 02 August 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 Teaching Committee 19/03 (07 June 2019)


  3. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

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


  4. New Course: COMP1010 The Art of Programming

    CSE currently offers two introductory-level service courses: COMP1000 Introduction to World Wide Web, Spreadsheets and Databases, and COMP1400 Programming for Designers. COMP1000 was introduced as a generic literacy course, and still attracts good enrolments. COMP1400 was originally designed for FBE and INFS students, as an intro to Java and software design, but those Schools have gradually developed alternative offerings and enrolments have dropped to the point where it is no longer viable.

    The CS50 course at Harvard has attracted many non-computing students and given them an attractively-packaged taste of the computing discipline. Is it worth replacing COMP1400 by a new course that provides an introduction to computing via Python? In some sense it would duplicate what happens in ENGG1811 but would be packaged to be less Engineering focussed. Should we also retire COMP1000 and focus on a single service course?


  5. New Faculty Courses: ENGG2000/3000 Engineering Design

    The Faculty plans to introduce Faculty-wide courses, somewhat in the vein of ENGG1000, ENGG2000 and ENGG3000. They intend to make these core in all specialisations. The specific content of the courses is not yet defined, although the plan is to have generic design content and a discipline-specific project.

    Since these courses seem to be unavoidable (pressure from The Top), we need to think of ways to make them work for us. Suggestions for the kind of design content that might be covered is available in the attached (ugh) spreadsheet.


  6. Course Offerings 2020

    The near final set of course offerings for 2020 is available at 2020 Course Offerings

    This is the last chance to review the courses before they are entered for 2020 term planning.


  7. Revising Course Details for 2020

    We reviewed course pre-reqs a few years ago. We reviewed (in theory) course learning outcomes last year. People have been reviewing courses as part of updating AIMS for Astra, and some people have suggested that their pre-reqs or learning outcomes do not accurately reflect the current offerings of the course. It is time for everyone to review pre-reqs, not in terms of courses, but in terms of assumed knowledge. Expressing learning outcomes in a way that makes it easier to relate them to assumed knowledge would also be helpful.


  8. Lab-based Exams

    Twenty CSE courses are using School-run exams in 19T2. Most (18, with over 5000 students) are lab-based exams, but some people seem to be using the School-run strategy to allow them to submit exams later. Doing School-run exams not in the lab creates a considerable amount of extra work for the School, work which could be done centrally if the lab is not really required. This is not acceptable.

    Lab-based exams have a considerable number of advantages, have been used over a long period of time in CSE, and have a well-defined setup mechanism. They are also configurable to anything from programming to databases to multiple-choice to essays. However, they also create a significant additional workload (mainly on Mei Cheng). In future, if you want to run a lab-based exam, you will need to contact me early in the term to justify why a lab exam is appropriate for your course.


  9. Contract Cheating

    Plagiarism is nowadays relatively easy to detect. Much harder is contract cheating. Is there anything that CSE could do to advance the state-of-the-art in detecting this? (Note: there will be a workshop on this as part of the Engineering Education Showcase on August 12).


  10. Astra and SMS

    Geoff Whale has written a script to set up transfer of marks from SMS into Astra. A draft of the documentation is available.


  11. Any Other Business