The University of New South Wales

Notice of Meeting: CSE-EdC 16/4



A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Education Committee
will be held at 12pm Friday 7 October 2016 in room K17-103 (HoS Meeting Room).

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

John Shepherd
Chair

Agenda


    1. Apologies and Welcome


    2. Minutes of Previous Meeting *

      CSE Teaching Committee 16/3 (8 July 2015)


    3. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

      John Shepherd will report on any interesting/relevant developments that have occurred in committees, working groups, etc. around UNSW.


    4. Status of Academic Proposals (new streams/courses)

      John Shepherd will outline the new courses and program structures that will be rolled out starting from 17s1. Details of the new core UG syllabus are available. Details of the new programs and streams are in the web pages recently prepared for the accreditation follow-up. These documents are evolving.

    5. Update on Review of Software Engineering Program

      Fethi Rabhi will discuss the deliberations of the working group which is looking into updating the Software Engineering program.

      Attachment: SE Handbook (working document)


    6. Review of MIT Degree Structure and Core Courses

      The MIT degree has just been updated to satisfy Accreditation requirements. This largely involved making core courses that most people already took, so was not a major change (except for the addition of the capstone project).

      For students with no computing background, the MIT degree has always had issues with course offerings in the student's first semester (where they must take courses with no pre-reqs) and the second semester (they can only take courses which have their first semester course as pre-reqs). Eric Martin will initiate discussion on we how might better structure the MIT degree so that students have sufficient, relevant offerings for each semester of their study.


    7. Implementing the new Core Courses

      As noted above, we have new core courses that will be rolled out starting from 17s1:

      17s1:
      • COMP1511 Introduction to Programming
      17s2:
      • COMP1521 Computer System Fundamentals
      • COMP1531 Software Engineering Fundamentals
      • COMP2521 Data Structures and Algorithms
      • COMP9900 Information Technology Project
      18s1:
      • COMP2511 Object-oriented Design and Programming
      18s2:
      • COMP3900 Computer Science Project

      The intention is to run all of these courses in both semesters.

      There are a number of forces acting at the UNSW level (2025 strategy, including a desire to put courses "online" and trimesterisation) that will impact how these courses are developed. A number of people have agreed to be involved in the design of the new core courses. We need to ensure that the courses are designed to take into account the above factors, to present a consistent and coherent picture to students, and to ensure that they can be taught by a number of different people (e.g. "pick up the material and run with it").


    8. Teaching at Scale

      In 16s1, our main introductory course (COMP1917) reached an enrolment of almost 700 students, a size that in the past was only associated with ENGG1811, which is offered to most of the non-CSE Engineering students. In 16s2, many of our courses filled (to lecture theatre capacity), and students were forced into WEB streams, or had to miss out on courses that they wanted to take. The PG enrolment number for 17s1 look to be twice as large as those in 16s1, and the UG enrolment numbers don't look like being less than 16s1. We need to rethink how we offer and deliver courses to cope with these kinds of numbers, while still giving students a decent range of study options and a good educational experience.


    9. For noting: Accreditation Status

      A new set of accreditation documents, describing the new program and stream structures, and detailing the new courses, have been made available to both the ACS and Engineers Australia. Hopefully, we will get the Accreditation of our degrees confirmed in the not-too-distant future.


    10. For noting: New CATEI

      UNSW is rolling out a new tool for surveying courses (myExperience). CSE will be using it strating from this semester (16s2); MP has already sent email to staff about this. One goal for the new system is to improve response rates, which is being encouraged by having a system which is usable on mobile devices and by encouraging lecturers to get students to fill it out in lectures (leaving the theatre while this is happening) and by better targetted email reminders.


    11. Any Other Business