The University of New South Wales

Minutes of Meeting

A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Teaching Committee (CSE Teaching Committee 21/01)
was held at 10:00am on Friday, 05 February 2021, via Teams.

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

John Shepherd
Committee Chair

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Agenda

1. Attendance

   Present:	John Shepherd (JAS) (chair), Andrew Taylor (AT), Eric Martin (EM), Fethi Rabhi (FR), Oliver Diessel (OD), Hui Wu (HW), Wayne Wobcke (WW), Matthew Sladescu (MS), Sri Parameswaran (SP), Aleks Ignjatovic (AI), Marc Chee (MC),
   Apologies:	none
   Absent:	-
   In Attendance:	Hayden Smith (HS), Chris di Bella (CdB), Tom Kunc (TK) (Student Rep), Shrey Somaya (SS) (Student Rep), Nicola Kwan (NK) (TSA Rep), Mieke Claeys (MkC) (Nucleus Rep), Mei Cheng Whal (MW)
   	Present / Quorum:   x / 5   (quorum 5 reached)




2. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

   CSE committees need to maintain minutes (for accreditation)
   Faculty Assessment Committee: thesis marking took too long, online exams, exams
   CSE: supp exams similar to previous years




3. Exams in 2021

   Need invigilated exams ASAP. UNSW heading towards online non-invigilated exams. CSE should do what we think is best for assessing our students. Suggestions: tighter deadlines (no 24-hour exams), harder questions, MCQs.




4. Elite Students Programme

   Program has run informally for some time. Now have new coordinator: Aleks Ignjatovic. Need flexibility, but not too much (for accreditation). Original proposal allowed only 12UC of core to be substituted; maybe go to 18UC to skip more stuff they know. Need to AB: disagrees with whole notion; too hard to manage; determine background knowledge by "placement tests". TK: skipping COMP1511 is a bad idea; make COMP1511 a co-req; 98 UAI is not a suitable filter ... can they program? OD: only make program available after year 1. MS: need way of assessing programming skills; UQ had informal reading group for high-achieving student AI: disagrees that they should be required to take COMP1511; if we force them to take stuff they know, they will quit CS.

   Actions: revise Elite Students document; substitutions available only after placement tests; need to advertise to attract excellent students.




5. New Course: COMP6772 Advanced C++ Software Engineering

   HS: COMP6771 started as a small-ish advanced course, built on compiler ideas; has become a large intermediate-level course, taken by some students who may not have quite enough background. Proposal: make COMP6771 more "intermediate/beginners" and ... CdB: Introduce a new advanced C++ course, with a focus on software engineering and building projects that will give skills useful beyond their degree.

   TK: overlap with COMP2041? also make more like "The Missing Semester". FR: sounds useful, since covers things not done elsewhere (backend design), also more project is useful

   Abdallah: The course proposal includes a part on Community Work where students are encouraged to contribute to open-source projects (subject to approval). This is a fantastic idea, but I am very surprised at the last criteria listed: "The project mustn't be released under a "restricted licence" according to Google.". I don't understand the motivation behind this restriction which rules out plenty of really good open-source projects. For instance, this criteria would make it unacceptable for our students to contribute to the following major c++ software or libraries as part of this course, VLC media player, Linux kernel, Stockfish (strongest Chess Engine), Notepad++ (text editor), gcc compiler etc. Indeed, the GPL and LGPL are among the main open source licences and are on the restricted list from Google.




6. Non-viable Streams?

   Some streams are no longer viable (core course no longer available). TK: rather than majors, have an informal way of recognising achievement in a certain sub-area of study. MkC: Embedded Systems needs to be revised and remove COMP2121 as core.




7. FYI: CSE Topic Mapping

   Look at ECLIPS entry for your course and make it consistent with the Course Outline. Add curriculum mapping from Learning Outcomes to EngAust Capabilities.




8. Any Other Business

   MyExperience: CSE scores were lower than usual, although some dispute on actual School and Faculty averages. Affected by poor evaluations for several large courses.

   AI: can we use Zoom for 700 students

   TK: What's the process for dealing with courses with low MyExperience? JS/AT: talk to convenors, give them resources for redevelopment, point them to CDI, change personnel?, terminate course (if not core), ...

   MkC: Nucleus overloaded; RPLs allow students straight into level-2 courses, which all seem to be full

   AT: if a student claims they need to enrol in a course to graduate, ask the Nucleus before agreeing