The University of New South Wales

Notice of Meeting



A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Education Committee (CSE Education Committee 19/02)
will be held at 2:00pm on Thursday, 9th May 2019, in Room 103 (HoS Meeting Room), Computer Science Building.

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

John Shepherd
Committee Chair

Agenda


  1. Apologies and Welcome


  2. Minutes of Previous Meeting *

    CSE Education Committee 19/01 (5 October 2019)

    Follow-up on Action items:

    • JAS: check whether course scheduling OK for T2 intake
    • WW/AB: AIMS revisions for COMP3411/9414/9814
    • JAS: terms of reference for School Assessment Review Group

  3. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

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

    • Keypath Courses (ZZEN9021, ZZEN9311, ZZEN9313) approved
    • Timetabling: UNSW policy is "enough seats for enrolled students"
    • Study Abroad/Exchange, Cross-institutional study

  4. UNSW3+ / 10-week terms

    Having just finished the first 10-week term, it is useful to discuss how convenors have adapted their courses, and any issues that have arisen.


  5. Timelines

    Reminder of important deadlines:

    • results for T1 courses must be finalised by May 22 (midday)
    • Course Outline for T2 courses must be published by May 27
    • proposals for new courses for 2020 ... ASAP
    • proposals for new programs for 2020 ... TOO LATE (deadline: February)
    • course/stream/program revisions for 2019 ... TOO LATE (deadline: February)
    • course/stream revisions for 2020 ... ASAP (deadline: August)
    • program revisions for 2020 ... ASAP (deadline: June)

    Workflow for major changes: AIMS → CSE EdC → Eng PC → Fac Board → Acad Board
    or
    Workflow for minor changes: AIMS → Faculty Approvers


  6. Special Consideration Handling

    UNSW (Student Lifecycle) has decided to, as much as possible, handle Special Considerations centrally. The stated reasons:

    • reduce the diversity of approaches in schools, to make it less confusing for students
    • remove some workload from academics (many SCs can be processed without intervention by the course convenor)
    • collect data on how the special consideration system is being used by students

    Because this was flagged after T1 Course Outlines were released, people were able to use whatever approach had been specified in the course outline. This will not be the case in future; Lifestyle expects more convenors to adopt a more "standard" handling procedure.

    Attachment: Special Consideration Standard Outcomes


  7. Astra

    UNSW is introducing in T2 Astra, a marks management system that all courses should use to finalise results. Astra also stores individual assessment marks, at the level of detail that they are descibed in AIMS. Higher-level marks, especially the final mark, can be computed using a formula (limited range). Convenors can add sub-mark under higher-level marks, but it is not anticipated that there will be more than e.g. 8-10 sub-marks for each course. This means that people who want to maintain dozens of marks will continue to use SMS, compute higher-level marks there, and upload them into Astra.

    Other characteristics of Astra:

    • Final marks cannot be uploaded; must be computed in Astra
    • Non final marks can be "normalised" (in either Astra or SMS)
    • Astra can automatically extract marks from Moodle Gradebook
    • There will be an automatic extraction mechanism for SMS soon
    • Marks can also be uploaded in CSV format from e.g. Excel

    We will run Astra demo sessions before the start of T2.


  8. Design/Project Courses

    The Faculty plans to introduce Faculty-wide courses, somewhat in the vein of ENGG1000, ENGG2000 and ENGG3000. They intend to make these core in all specialisations. The specific content of the courses is not yet defined, although the plan is to have generic design content and a discipline-specific project.

    The Faculty also plans to introduce "Vertically Integrated Project" courses for students to get academic credit for things like Sunswift, Redback Racing, BlueSat, etc. The VIP projects are aimed at 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students. The structure involves students working on the project in all three terms, but only enrolling in a 6UC VIP course in T3. It is hoped that students will take more than one VIP course and gradually move towards managing the project in their 4th year.


  9. Budget and Teaching Strategies

    Helen Paik is continuing he Working Group to see if we can achieve better (or at least as good) learning outcomes at lower cost. Please send her feedback on any clever ideas on how to deliver courses with a smaller casual teaching budget.


  10. Any Other Business