Minutes of Teaching Committee Meeting - 17 September 2004

Original Meeting on 17 September 2004:
Present:billw (chair), bgaeta, emartin, sruocco, smp, sowmya, kleing, ckutay, ashesh, jzhang, rmathew, charlesw, carrollg, danielw, morri, anymeyer, geoffw, lambert, amin, sridevan, plaice, odiessel

Reconvened Meeting on 21 September 2004:
Present: billw (chair), gernot, geoffw, sridevan, odiessel, huig, ignjat, ashesh, richardb, plaice, kenr, compton
Apologies: charlesw

Minutes of Reconvened Meeting

The meeting was opened at 2.04pm

Minutes of previous meeting were not considered, but will be considered at the reconvened meeting on Tuesday 21 September 2004 (2pm, K17-103).

NICTA Course Proposals

These were all approved. The UNSW form needs to be completed, in the cases where this has not already been done, by early on Friday 24 September, in order to allow the proposals to be signed by the Head of School and passed on the the Faculty Office.

1. Proposal for revised course (NICTA-taught): Real Time Systems - Stefan Petter (smp) and Sergio Ruocco (sruocco).

2. Proposal for revised Multimedia Systems course: COMP9519 (PDF). Note that the course is to run in s2 not s1, despite what it says in the proposal document. (NICTA-taught) - Jack Yu (zyu), Jian Zhang (jzhang), Reji Mathew (rmathew).

3. Proposal for new course (75% NICTA-taught): Knowledge Representation and Reasoning - Jochen Renz, Thomas Meyer, Norman Foo, Maurice Pagnucco.

4. Proposal for new course (NICTA-taught): Special Topics in Software Engineering - Cat Kutay and Ross Jeffery. Note: Special in the course title should be Advanced. The prerequisite as presented in the proposal document only permits the handful of coursework PG students who take COMP9008 to enrol, and the proposers were encouraged to change this for the version to be presented to the Faculty Education Committee.

5. Proposal for new course (NICTA-taught): Advanced Topics in Software Verification - Gerwin Klein, Ron van der Meyden

General Education Course Proposals

These were approved in principle, with the proviso that 2 or 3 would be chosen to be offered, each possibly incorporating the best of more than one proposal. Lab work would be avoided in the courses to be offered, in order to contain costs (GenEd courses are funded on the assumption that they will comprise 28 hours in total of lectures/tutes, e.g. 21 hours of lectures + 7 hours of tutes.)

Robotics and Computer Games Construction seem like strong starters.

6. GenEd Course Proposal based on COMP1081 - Ashesh Mahidadia. (Proposal document was circulated at meeting.)

7. GenEd Course Proposal on Human Computer Interaction - Daniel Woo and Nadine Marcus.

8. GenEd Course Proposal on Robotics - Maurice Pagnucco

9. GenEd Course Proposal on Spreadsheet and Database Applications - Maurice Pagnucco

10. GenEd Course Proposal on Networks - Mahbub Hassan and Networks Teaching Cluster

11. GenEd Computer Games Course Proposal - Amir Michail.

12. 2 GenEd Proposals: Understanding Computer Technology I and II - Aleks Ignjatovic

New and Revised Program Proposals

13. Proposal for new combined program - BSc Computer Science + B Digital Media Proposal form (PDF) - Carroll Graham.

    Approved. It was noted that we now have written agreement from the relevant Head of School in COFA.

14. Revised CE Program - Sri Parameswaran

    This item was still under discussion when the meeting was adjourned.

    Several aspects had however been resolved, including:

    • that C wll be used in the initial programming course in first year;
    • that the overall structure will be as shown in the structure proposal subject to points made below;
    • courses may need to be shuffled, particularly in 3rd and 4th year;
    • the compression of the maths requirements to 4 × 6 UoC courses may not in the end be feasible, due to the fact that Maths is unwilling to teach multiple versions of the course, and so will only change if all of Engineering agrees.

15. Revised Software Engineering Program - Ken Robinson

    Approved.

16. New Plans for BSc Computer Science - Tim Lambert.

    Approved. Some work is needed on (a) updating the course names listed under the various plans, adding extra plans, including a generic plan; (b) Adding a pointer to the URL in the Virtual Handbook that describes the full range of choices for minors (in 3970 Science and Maths), and clarifying the status of the listed minors and recommended or common student choices.

    Note that BSc Computer Science used to have minors, but seems to have lost them when BSc Computer Science moved from Faculty of Science to Faculty of Engineering.

Non-NICTA New and Revised Course Proposals

In the case of the new courses and COMP9416, it may only be possible to run these, the first time around at least, if they are taught outside of load.

17. Revision of COMP9416 Knowledge Based Systems - Achim Hoffmann representing working group

    Approved. Prerequisites to be updated - current version appears to let first years take this course.

    Proposal on UNSW form needed by early on Friday 24 September 2004 for signing by Paul and transmission to Faculty of Engineering.

18. Revision of COMP3111 Software Engineering - Albert Nymeyer as chair of working group.

    Approved.

    Proposal on UNSW form needed by early on Friday 24 September 2004 for signing by Paul and transmission to Faculty of Engineering.

19. Proposal for new course: Computer Games Progamming workshop - Adnan Amin and Tim Lambert.

    Approved. Code COMP4431 to be used.

    Revised proposal on UNSW form needed by early on Friday 24 September 2004 for signing by Paul and transmission to Faculty of Engineering.

20. Proposal for new/revised course: COMP3451/9451 Theory of Computation through Prolog - Eric Martin/Arthur Ramer.

    Approved.

    Proposal on UNSW form needed by early on Friday 24 September 2004 for signing by Paul and transmission to Faculty of Engineering.

21. Proposal for new/revised course: Pattern Recognition - Adnan Amin.

    Approved. Code COMP9515 to be used. Statistical prerequisites will be needed, as well as the COMP ones; for UGs, these would be MATH2859 or MATH2801 or MATH2901. For PGs, assumed knowledge equivalent one of these. Minor changes to handbook description were suggested. GradCertIT to be added to list of programs at item 1.15.

22. Proposal for new/revised course: Industrial Software Development - John Plaice

    Approved.

    Proposal on UNSW form needed by early on Friday 24 September 2004 for signing by Paul and transmission to Faculty of Engineering. This version should include text/reference book information. It was noted that while all-automatic assessment is not a problem per se, the automatic assessment would have to include quality feedback to students. Prerequisites proposed to be COMP2011 and COMP2041, with COMP2041 replaced by something else for programs like CE and SE that do not normally include COMP2041. For coursework PGs, COMP9024 is likely to be the prerequisite.

Miscellaneous Items

Time did not permit coverage of these items. At about 4.45pm, the meeting was adjourned to 2pm Tuesday 21 September 2004, with the agenda of the adjourned meeting to include these two items and the unresolved aspects of the CE revision.

23. Compulsory tutor training for 2005 - RichardB

24. Matters arising from minutes: University Medal criteria follow-up.
    The recommendations of the previous TC meeting on university medal criteria were presented at the Faculty Education Committee. A show of hands at the end of the discussion revealed scant support for CSE's position.

1. The adjourned meeting opened at 2.05pm;

2. University Medal Criteria: billw reported that the TC's proposal on University Medal criteria from the May meeting was presented at the Faculty Education Committee. There was little support for CSE's proposal that University medals should be awarded on the basis of students reaching a consistent standard, say a WAM 10 more than the cut-off for first-class honours. There was some discussion of the possibility of awarding CSE medals for such students, but not decision was taken.

3. Compulsory tutor training for 2005: Richard Buckland described a pilot training scheme for casual tutors (as distinct from topups, for whom a training scheme already existed). It was agreed that this should be continued, and made highly recommended for new casual tutors, and that Andrew Taylor's tutor selection web pages should indicate which casual tutor applicants had completed such a course.

4. COMP2091: This was not originally on the TC agenda for this meeting, so could not be approved. COMP2091 is required as a follow-on for COMP1091 and for the revised Electrical Engineering/Telecommunications programs, so is needed irrespective of the outcome of the CE revision. It is proposed that it be approved by circulation. The proposal has in fact been circulated recently. If you have problems with this proposal, speak now or forever hold your peace.

   Postscript: here is the 2091 proposal on the official UNSW form

5. Computer Engineering revision continued: Agreement was reached on the following:
   • that Comp Eng Project and Operating Systems would be exchanged between Year 3 Session 1 and Year 3 Session 2;
   • that the rearrangement of syllabus material between COMP2021 and COMP3221 should go ahead, and be fast-tracked - course revision documents are needed;

   A number of issues were identified for further discussion, and these were to be referred to future meetings to the Working Party on the Computer Engineering Program Revision. Issues included:

   • whether the School's programs (BI/CE/CS/SE) should teach introductory programs in different ways;
   • whether teaching programming two different ways in CSE's own programs would lead one way or the other to become "second-class";
   • whether the needs of BI and CS (which are both jam-packed with courses, unlike CS and SE, which have free electives) are different enough to justify different numbers of programming courses in first year;
   • whether rearrangement and tighter integration of COMP1011/1021/2011 would reconcile the opponents of functional programming in first year to the current first year courses.

   Brief statements on these matters from speakers in the meeting are to be sought for inclusion in these minutes

6. The adjourned meeting closed at 3.55pm.