The University of New South Wales

Minutes of Meeting



Minutes of the meeting (CSE Teaching Committee 17/04) of the Computer Science and Engineering Teaching Committee
held at 1:00pm on Friday, 27 October 2017, in Room 103 (HoS Meeting Room), Computer Science Building.

Enquiries concerning these minutes should be directed to John Shepherd, extension +61293856494, jas@cse.unsw.edu.au.

John Shepherd
Committee Chair

Present: John Shepherd (JAS) (chair), Andrew Taylor (AT), Bruno Gaeta (BG), Annie Guo (AG), Wen Hu (WH), Eric Martin (EM), Helen Paik (HP), Andrew Bennett(AB), Jashank Jeremy (JJ)
Apologies: Maurice Pagnucco
Absent: Fethi Rabhi, Alan Blair
In Attendance: Sri Parameswaran (SP), Wayne Wobcke (WW), Gabriele Keller (GK), Angela Finlayson (AF), Bradford Heap (BH), Curtis Millar (CM), Evan Kohilas (EK)
  Members / Quorum:   6 / 6   (quorum reached)

  1. Apologies and Welcome

    Meeting commenced at 1:06pm.

    Apologies received from: Maurice Pagnucco


  2. Minutes of Previous Meeting

    Nobody objected to the contents of the Minutes of CSE Education Committee 17/03 meeting (28 July 2017)

    Business arising from minutes:

    • synchronise pre-reqs between AIMS and the Handbook ... ongoing
    • how other universities structure Honours ... ongoing
    • how many people transfer BE->BSc to graduate ... ongoing
    • write an updated FAQ for academic staff ... ongoing
    • converting double-badged courses to hybrid ... ongoing
    • policy for Supp Exams ... ongoing
    • academic staff induction ... ran in O-week 17s2

    JAS: can do most of this over summer


  3. Reports from Committees outside CSE

    Faculty of Engineering Programs Committee

    • Digital Uplift project attended to explain what they can do
    • Proposals from other Schools (none from CSE this time!)

  4. UNSW3+ Developments

    UNSW3+ vs CSE

    • we met with UNSW3+ consultants several times to review schedules
    • requested changes ... some were made
    • published offerings had anomalies; we had our own list
    • UNSW3+ blamed us for discrepancies; requested us to take down our list

    Proposed Offerings

    • JAS tabled table of proposed CSE offerings
    • currently light in T2 (SP: T2 light in lecturers)
    • plan to have no course offerings in Summer (too short)
      • HP: special projects?, BH: taste of research
      • AT,BG: thesis A over summer?
    • JAS: some courses will run three times (core/critical)
    • BH: will T2 enrolments be large? (in each course, few offerings)
    • JAS: not that many extra courses, 17→18 is bigger jump than 18→19

    Pre-requisites

    • JAS: pre-reqs being reviewed; goal is simplification
    • JAS: pre-reqs must be put into SiMS for auto-enrolment
      • if not, the (rapdily shrinking) Student Office is flooded with manual enrolments
      • and same applies to all pre-req waivers, create extra unnecessary(?) work
    • JAS: 2018 courses will have a mix of students with old/new core courses
      • hopefully soon, "legacy" courses in pre-reqs can go away
    • 2511: needs to take account of new 1531 (Aarthi/WW to resolve)
    • 2121: needs to take account of new 1521 (JAS/SP to resolve)

    Course Templates (i.e. how to run courses under 3+)

    • long discussion about issues with running courses in exactly 10 weeks
      • JAS: current "span" of semester is 14 weeks (12+break+week13)
      • JAS: under UNSW3+, "span" is exactly 10 weeks
      • CM: assignments will suffer with reduced duration
    • JAS: and accompanied by large increase in enrolments
    • web streams
      • SP: should do web streams properly, capture whole lecture (screen+board+...)
      • JAS: Faculty has kits/students to help with this (EK: worked ok in COMP3121 17s1)
      • GK has a setup for capturing screen/iPad/drawing/etc. (presented at TP Workshop)
      • AF: Rex Vowels Th has a "smart podium" (can draw on screen)
        • works ok, currently being rolled out in other theatres
      • BH: web streams could use MOOC-style short videos
        • JAS: Faculty (MP) providing video recording booths to assist this
    • HP: what about PG courses under 2+2 lecture format?
      • JAS: plan is to have lecture "bands" (1-3,4-6,7-9) to avoid 3-hour blocks
        • may require students to attend UNSW twice per week for one course
        • most students these days seem to be full-time internationals; they're ok
        • locals? may have issues with attending ... web stream?
        • no problem with internationals not having 4 course/term ... new requirement 8 course/year
    • problems with fitting content into 10 weeks
      • AB: 1511 won't work if we cut material
      • AF: 1911 won't work if we cut material
      • WH: 2521 is a nightmare: Labs: 36h→30h, Lectures: 48h→36h


  5. Other Teaching-related Issues

    • JAS: expecting a large T3 intake (comparable to T1)
      • EK: T3 starters have problems with sequencing of SENG workshops
    • AT: COMP2121 is moving towards a more specialist CompEng course
      • no longer core for any major except COMPBH
      • superseded as core by COMP1521 in other majors
    • double-badged courses e.g. COMP3331 + COMP9331 (not really UNSW3+-specific)
      • all such courses could be made hybrid (e.g. COMP6331)
      • JAS: would trick Faculty into thinking more course rationalisation done :-)
      • JAS: EM doesn't like the idea; PG students think they're doing "less than PG" courses
      • EM: doesn't mind the idea
      • TODO: jas to investigate, and could be done in context of UNSW3+ revisions

  6. Any Other Business

    UNSW global Diploma

    • JAS: they run our syllabus, we get oversight
    • WW: do we have enough control?

    Ultimately, they end up in our second year


  7. Meeting closed at 2:55pm