Minutes of Teaching Committee Meeting - 26 March 2004

Present: billw (chair), ignjat, kenr, blair, willu, carrollg, bgaeta, bradh, lambert, achim, ramer, compton
Apologies: jas, andrewt

The meeting opened at 2.11pm.

  1. Proposal for (re-)introduction of BSc Computer Science/BA
    Proposal document: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.
    Approved

  2. Proposal for BINF9010 Bioinformatics Methods and Applications - Bruno
    Approved

  3. Draft new program proposal: BSc Computer Science + BDigital Media - CarrollG
    Approved in principle. The committee approved the omission of COMP2021 from this program if necessary to make it work.

  4. Proposed Course on Agents: Proposal & Syllabus - Will Uther
    Approved

  5. Proposal to vary the content of COMP9020 between s1 and s2 - Arthur
    Approved. COMP9025 may run instead of COMP9020 in 04s2. Transitional Arrangements: Arthur will be nice to students who are enrolled in COMP9020 in 04s2, providing an alternative version of the course more similar to COMP9020 to students for whom that is appropriate. The Head of School or his delegate will referee any disputes about this.

  6. Codes of conduct for response to e-mails from students - Bill
    and for students on when it is reasonable to send e-mails - Achim see also The Tyranny of E-mail
    There was an extensive discussion. Bill W will draft guidelines for students on what type of e-mails are appropriate and inappropriate, in the form of a web page. This will be circulated to staff for comment. The principle was affirmed that academic staff should respond to reasonable requests from students in a reasonable amount of time. Staff may if they wish require that e-mail enquiries related to a specific lecture course be sent to that course's e-mail address (e.g. enquiries re COMP1011 to cs1011@cse.unsw.edu.au).

  7. Programming Competition Practicum - Aleks
    This proposal comes under the head of activities for "gifted and talented", or better "gifted and motivated" students. As there might be difficulties with 4 × 2-UoC courses, it was agreed that the basic idea could be implemented in one of at least two ways:
    1. lunch-time meetings/lectures for students - reviving a series of lunch-time lectures organised by Andrew Taylor a few years ago. Tim, Aleks, and Andrew are asked to look into this.
    2. an extra lecture per week associated with a particular course such as COMP3121 - attendance would be voluntary. This scheme could eventually be extended to create two versions of such a course, regular and Higher, differentiated by:
      • an extra lecture per week;
      • alternative assessment.
      The extended scheme would require formal approval of a new course proposal, but voluntary extra lectures could of course be offered without further approval.

  8. I would like the TC to draw the attention of the School to the value of the CES data and the need to use it responsibly. It should not be used arbitrarily and out of context. - Ken
    Ken articulated his views on this issue, and while the issue that gave rise to this item had been resolved, Andrew as administrator of the CES surveys was asked to arrange for CES survey web pages to carry a reminder that the information in those pages is confidential to staff - specifically to academic staff under the current agreement by academic staff.

The meeting closed at 4.35pm.

School of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052, AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 2 9385 6876

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