CSE Teaching Committee, Agenda for Meeting, 14 Mar 2008

1. Minutes of Previous Meeting (10 Oct 2007)

2. Use of Week 0 - John Shepherd

   Students are required to attend UNSW in Week 0 for whatever non-assessable activities we wish to run. How can we make the best use of this time?

3. Issues in Setting Up Courses 08s1

   What problems have people had in setting up their courses this semester? Are there any aspects of course "initialisation" that need to be improved?

4. LTPIs: Course Outlines, CATEI Reports

   Less than one-third of course outlines were posted by the requested date (start of week 0). Most were missing at least one of the two areas singled out in the Faculty Performance Indicator document: relating graduate attributes to course outcomes and report on course evaluation for previous offering. So far, only 10 out of 60+ courses have entered a HoS Report for the 07s2 CATEI Evaluation. What can we do to improve this situation?

   Report: Performance Indicators

5. Program Coherence - John Shepherd

   We need to check that our programs have well-defined goals and that the constituent courses fit together properly to acheive those goals. Program goals are documented in the various program descriptions. As a first step towards determining how well our courses fit together to achieve these aims, I'd like to document precise inputs (assumed knowledge) and outputs (student knowledge/skills at end of course) for each of our courses. I'll collect/collate this information initially from Course Outlines, and will ask for further details from individuals later in the semester. One outcome of this exercise would be to clarify pre-requisites across all CSE courses.

6. 4th-year Theses - John Shepherd

   The advent of 12-week semesters gives an opportunity to adjust the way 4th-year theses are handled. Thesis A seminars are now in Week 7, with the Thesis A report due in week 11. Thesis B initial demonstrations are in weeks 8/9, with the Thesis B report due in Week 12. I propose to replace the Demo Day on the last Friday of semester by a Thesis Showcase which highlights the best 10 theses (as nominated by supervisors and assessors based on the Week 8/9 demos). Are there other changes we could make to Theses? Assessment? Coursework theses for students with WAM < 65? Supervision load-balancing? Do we care that well over a third of students now do theses with supervisors outside CSE?

   Proposal: Thesis Assessment: (latest version) (original version)

7. Graduate Attributes - John Shepherd

   UNSW is committed to associating with each course and program a set of knowledge/skills that every graduate could be expected to acquire. Some of these are generic, while others are more discipline specific. There is pressure on us to describe/justify these for all of our courses over the next 6 months. Can we do this reasonably painlessly? Do our courses actually contribute to developing graduate attributes?

   Background: Getting Started (with Graduate Attributes) from the LTU, UNSW Policy on Graduate Attributes, UNSW Engineering Graduate Attributes.

8. Any other business

• Future directions in CSE curricula

  Computer forensics? Service-oriented computing?