CSE Teaching Committee, Minutes of Meeting, Friday 27 Mar 2009


The meeting commenced at 2 PM.

Present: Arcot Sowmya (chair), Alan Blair, Oliver Diessel, Bruno Gaeta, Peter Ho, Tim Lambert, Eric Martin, Sri Parameswaran (entered 2.30 PM), John Shepherd, Wayne Wobcke, Jingling Xue

Apologies: Richard Buckland, Ken Robinson

  1. Minutes of the previous meeting held on 16 Feb were approved as a true record.

  2. Actions following from Minutes

    1. AS has notified academic staff of this meeting, and will do so for all future meetings.
    2. AS has obtained access to teachadmin account and has begun updating the web page; in particular agendas and minutes of TC meetings have started appearing online.
    3. Before start of S1, AS mailed all teaching staff on DC's suggestions and assessment criteria for course outlines.
    4. AS has sent modified GenEd list to DC.
    5. AS is awaiting modified course proposals for the security courses from the concerned lecturers.
    6. AS has suggested addition of RB to DC's Eng/Math group.
    7. The issue of teaching in Week 0 was clarified by School office soon after the previous TC meeting.

  3. Report on Academic Matters

    AS reported on Faculty T&L Strategy meeting held on Feb 20th. DC stated that the Faculty needed a short-term (1 year) and long-term (5 year) strategy for T&L. These should include performance targets and ways to measure achievements. The university and the Faculty have L&T Plans. A new Faculty wide 2 year professional Masters is on the cards, and any school can add a plan to it. Accreditation will be applied for. Industrial Training for 2 year Masters is also coming up. DC asked for school practice on fourth year thesis outlines and Industrial Training to be sent to him. On CATEI, every course should be surveyed at least every other time it runs, and every teaching staff must be surveyed at least once a year. It was recommended that schools run a student focus group every year, to identify issues of concern. A number of T&L areas and issuesi within them will be discussed throughout the year.

    The new proposed program from Surveying and SIS on GeoInformation Systems was presented and CSE reactions discussed. Suggestions and queries from the discussion included:

    These suggestions have been subsequently passed onto Dr Samsung Lim from Surveying and SIS.

    The proposed Parallel Teaching Policy was tabled for information. The main change is the introduction of a new course type called `hybrid', in which both undergraduate and postgraduate students may enrol, in addition to all current arrangements.

    On summer teaching, DC has asked for suggestions on courses to be taught in the summer session. CSE has so far agreed to offer only COMP 1927 in summer.

  4. S2 course modifications/new course proposals from CSE

    Course revisions for COMP 4904, 4905, 4906 and new course proposal for BINF 9020 have been forwarded to the Faculty, for consideration at the April Education Committee meeting. The first three are minor changes to course names and descriptions of the Industrial Training courses in the BSc (CS) Co-op program. BINF 9020 is a new postgraduate course to run in parallel with BINF 3020, that will allow postgraduate students to enrol.

    The course revision for COMP 3441 and new course proposal for COMP 4442 (both in security) are still awaited.

    AS alerted TC to the 2009 deadlines for approval process for new and revised programs , to meet the first release of the 2010 Online handbook at the end of Aug, 2009. Here is a short summary, with local school deadlines added.

    Faculty Standing Committees have delegated authority to approve course revisions and new courses. The deadlines for reported course offerings for the following session to DEST is 1 April and 1 Oct. Of course to also get them into the online handbook, the deadline remains end Aug. The local school deadlines are 4-6 weeks before the Faculty deadline, depending on meeting dates. Check with TC Chair for details if you plan to submit a course proposal.

    For program revisions going to Academic Board, the proposal should have been considered by the Faculty Standing Committees before 30 June 2009. Do get prior advice on whether a program revision would need to go to Academic Board or not- contact TC Chair in the first instance on this.

    For new program proposals going to Council via Academic Board, the proposal should have been considered by the Faculty Standing Committees before 30 June 2009. It must be noted that all new programs MUST be approved by Council.

    All program proposals should be presented at a school TC meeting 4-6 weeks before the Faculty deadline, depending on meeting dates. Check with TC Chair for details if you plan to present one.

    KEEP IN MIND THAT DELAYS CAN OCCUR IF COMMITTEES REQUIRE MORE INFORMATION. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE.

  5. Proposal on 2+2 program with Chinese university

    JX explained the interest in a 2+2 program in Computer Engineering and Software Engineering from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), which is ranked second in Electronics (by Discipline) by the China Academy of Management Science Degrees: CompEng and CompSci. The process for obtaining university approval is clear, however JX needs assistance in translation of the Chinese curricula and in building up a case at UNSW.

    ACTION: The matter is referred to HoS for further action.

  6. Ensuring Stability in first year course content

    Members spoke to this topic, with WW explaining the issues with teaching COMP 2911 in S2. It was agreed that first and second year course lecturers (past and present since the changes) should get together and discuss a teaching plan, including objectives and outcomes. In particular, this is now urgent for S2 courses. ACTION: AS to call such a meeting of First Year Director an lecturers of first and second year courses.

  7. Deferred Items

    The following items were deferred to the next meeting:

    1. 2010 program and course initiatives

  8. Any other business

    TL flagged changes to the CS program:
    1. COMP 3111 Software Engineering, which is core for CS, has been discontinued by CSE. Possible replacements are one of COMP 3711 Software Project management and COMP 3141 Software System Design and Implementation
    2. COMP 2920 Professional Issues and Ethics for Computer Science has been discontinued, due to discontinuation of COMP 4920 (with which it was co-taught). A possible replacement is SENG 4921, subject to approval of Software Engineering Coordinator. It may be necessary to create a COMP3xxx course for the purpose.



School of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052, AUSTRALIA

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