Note: These minutes are based on JohnS's recollection of the discussion. As noted in the September 2007, he lost his notes from the meeting, and so doesn't have the fine details, such as attendance, start-time, end-time, and the precise discussion points.
No issues were noted.
EricM presented a significant revision of the CSE Masters programs. The idea is to dispense with separate degrees for ``professional up-skilling'' (the old 8685) and ``retraining'' (the old 8682). The rationale was that there were a range of incoming backgrounds that were not catered for well by the coarse division into 8685 and 8682 (e.g. some students with an undergraduate computing degree, who would normally have been channeled into 8685, turned out to have a relatively weak computing background, which meant that they struggled in 8685). Also, there were problems with students choosing degrees on the basis of their length, rather than what was appropriate for their background.
There will be a single degree, with students entering at different levels, depending on their backgrounds. The Masters degree would be 16 courses (2 years full-time); there would also be an 12-course Graduate Diploma and a 4-course Graduate Certificate. Students without an undergraduate computing degree would be channeled into either the Certificate or Diploma. Students with a solid undergraduate computing background could get sufficient credit to complete the Masters with around 8 courses (similar to the old 8685). Advanced standing would be based entirely on exemption exams (students would need to prove that they had the relevant background knowledge, not simply show the presence of an apparently relevant subject on a transcript).
The previous postgraduate degrees allowed articulation from a Diploma to a Masters only if the lower degree was not conferred. Under the new scheme, articulation with full credit is simplified. As long as a student has completed the lower degree with a WAM of 65 or better, they can enrol in the higher degree with full credit.
The final change is in the course groupings. The old Group A, B, C, D, which corresponded roughly to introductory (A), intermediate (B,C) and advanced (D), have been replaced by groupings based on the length of the pre-requisite chain. This eliminates anomalies in the old scheme, where some Group B/C courses were introductory in nature, and some Group A courses were more advanced.
ArthurR proposed a new course to be included in the new Faculty masters program, but also made available in the CSE postgrad coursework programs. It is similar in nature to the old Advanced Decision Theory course that used to be offered in CSE.
MauriceP gave a brief outline of an introductory-level IT literacy course that CSE could offer as a component of the new Faculty-based DipSET program (which is designed to bring intending engineering students up to the requisite level in their HSC engineering requirements, if they don't have the right background from HSC, but are keen to study Engineering). Since this course will be bundled in with our existing GENE8000 offering, and since the numbers are likely to be small, there is no significant additional teaching load generated.
MauriceP described what they'd done in 06s2 Engineering Week and talked about the comments from the Eng Faculty survey on student satisfaction with the week. He proposed some changes for 07s2 to deal with student comments that they would have preferred more "hands-on" activities.
BillW (after considerable personal effort) has set up the online CATEI system so that all courses will be surveyed with a Form A Course Evaluation, and all lecturers will be given a Form B teaching Evaluation.
JohnS noted the change to 12-week semesters and also that the Faculty was going to provide web interface where people could record their proposed course changes, to simplify the task of pushing any revisions through the relevant faculty committees.
JohnS noted that summer session this year starts \emph{before} marks from 07s2 are finalised. This is clearly a problem for students who are waiting on an 07s2 mark to decide whether to enrol in a summer session course.
RichardB will present some comments on and ideas about how to improve the new foundations stream (COMP1911, COMP1921, COMP2911) at an upcoming meeting.
Eventually, there will be financial and accreditation pressure to ensure that we thoroughly document how our courses lead to students acquiring the graduate attributes specified on the UNSW, Engineering and (eventually) CSE web-sites.
None that I recall.
School of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052, AUSTRALIA
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