The University of New South Wales

Notice of Meeting: CSE-EdC 16/1



A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Education Committee
will be held at 2pm Thursday 25 February 2016 in room K17-103.

Enquiries concerning this agenda should be directed to jas@cse.unsw.edu.au.

John Shepherd
Chair

Agenda


    1. Apologies and Welcome


    2. New Name and Constitution

      3. The Teaching Committee (TC) has been renamed the Education Committee (EdC), to better reflect that the committee is more concerned with the content of our courses, streams and programs than with the process of teaching them. A new constitution for the committee has been drafted and approved by the Head of School.


    3. Minutes of Previous Meeting *

      CSE Teaching Committee 15/7 (16 Oct 2015)


    4. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

      John Shepherd will report on any interesting/relevant devlopments that have occurred in committees, work-groups, etc. at UNSW.


    5. New Course Proposals: Cyber Security

      Richard Buckland has been working on developing several new courses on Cyber Security in conjunction with the Commonwealth Bank. Eventually these will form the core of a major in Cyber Security.

      Summary pf Cyber Security Stream (and courses therein):


      Preliminary drafts of the proposals:


    6. Changes to CSE Core Syllabus

      The Core Syllabus Working Group put up proposals for five core courses in early 2015. Soon after, the UNSW 2025 process emerged with a possibility that the lengths of teaching terms might be reduced to ten weeks. Action on the proposals was then put on hold. The current versions of the suggested courses are available on the Core Syllabus site. Once these are agreed on, we can develop course proposals and make changes to all of the affected programs (all CSE programs and some Engineering programs).


    7. A 4-year Degree for Computer Science

      The introduction of a separate program for CS Honours (4515), with its strict requirement for level-4 courses, has led to some very good students deciding that they would not be able to meet the requirements of CS Honours, based on the advanced courses they had already taken and the available level-4 offerings.

      There are several possible ways this problem could be addressed:

      • better program advice to potential Honours students in the 3978 program
      • converting 3978 into a 4-year program
      • introducing a new (additional) 4-year CS program, and retaining 3978

      There are other reasons to consider a degree specifically called Computer Science, and reasons why it should be a 4-year degree.

      Brad Hall's proposal:


    8. Accreditation

      The deadline for preparing accreditation materials is rapidly approaching. For each course offered in the school, we need to supply:

      • Curriculum Mapping
        • using the CMAP tool
        • add (if not already present): Learning Outcomes (LO), Assessments (As)
        • add mappings: As → LO and LO → Graduate Capabilities
      • Course Outline
      • Exam materials (if course has exam)
        • exam Paper
        • sample exam submissions (one HD, one mid-CR, one low PS, one high FL)
      • Teaching materials/resources
        • examples of lecture notes (e.g. 2 lectures)
        • examples of tute exercises (e.g. 2 tutorials)
        • examples of lab exercises (e.g. 2 labs)
      • Student work
        • examples of lab reports/submissions
        • examples of assignment submissions
      • Assessment material
        • examples of assignment/project/essay specifications
        • examples of assignment/project/essay marking criteria

      Each course should be curriculum-mapped by a recent course convenor.


    9. For noting: Minor Changes to Courses

      AIMS has recently been modified to allow small changes (which SAS wants to called "field edits") to be made to course entries, without having to go through a complete course revision process. Such changes are approved within the School. An example of such a change is a handbook entry amendment for COMP4336/9336 Mobile Data Networking proposed by Mahbub Hassan.


    10. For noting: Abolition of PC grade

      The Academic Board has voted to abolish the PC grade, starting from 16s1. The impacts of this are not yet clear, but course convenors need to carefully consider whether students with total marks near 50 deserve to pass or not. One thing is certain: students with marks in the range 46-49 will be likely to ask convenors to reconsider their mark.


    11. Any Other Business