The University of New South Wales

Minutes of Meeting



A meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Education Committee (CSE Education Committee 21/03)
was held at 09:30am on Friday, 04 June 2021, via Zoom.

John Shepherd
Committee Chair

Minutes


  1. Apologies and Welcome

    2. Present: Members: John Shepherd (JAS) (chair), Andrew Taylor (AT), Bruno Gaeta (BG), Alan Blair (AB), Fethi Rabhi (FR), Eric Martin (EM), Wayne Wobcke (WW), Matthew Sladescu (MS)
    Staff: Carroll Morgan (CM), Christopher Di Bella (CDB), Johannes Aman Pohjola (JP), Marc Chee (MC), Raveen de Silva (RDS)
    Apologies: Oliver Diessel (OD)
    Absent: -
    In Attendance: Raghav Lall (RL), Shrey Somaiya (SS), Tom Kunc (TK), Nicola Kwan (NK)

  2. Reports from Bodies outside CSE

    Reports on any interesting/relevant devlopments that have occurred in committees, work-groups, etc. at UNSW.

    Engineering Academic Programs committee:

    • undergraduate Certificate in Computer Science
    • Western Sydney University 2+2 program
    • NS Global Diploma as 1+3 for Comp Eng
    • 2-year MComm/MIT
    • course reviews should happen more frequently
    • UNSW wants return to f2f teaching for 21T3
    • AGSE: continuing professional development
    • ACOA: UNSW-wide course outline tool
    • Inspera: UNSW-wide online assessment tool
    • Peer observation of teaching and CDI
    • EFFECT: education focussed career support - project funding

    No further comments on this.


  3. Accreditation

    CSE has completed the documentation for Engineers Australia accreditation of undergraduate engineering degrees. This included a School Report, Course Outlines, examples of assessment, and curriculum mapping. Engineers Australia visit July 26-28, meeting academic staff and students.

    Also, ACS accreditation of all degrees (BE(Hons) plus Comp Sci and MIT). Requires a new set of documentation and new curriculum mapping. This will require more assistance from academic staff.

    No further comments on this.


  4. Revising Software Engineering

    Fethi and Carroll have been working to revamp the Software Engineering degree beyond the core.

    CM:described the proposal

    • add small amount (ε) of "formal methods" to COMP1511
    • reorder subsequent courses COMP6721 → SENG2011 → COMP211
    • requires changing COMP6721 (since no longer follows COMP2111)
    • COMP6721 currently not allowed for CS students ... needs to change
    AT: is COMP6721 viable, given the tiny enrolments?
    CM: COMP5721 will be scaled up to e.g. 150, but cannot scale to e.g. 500
    CM: rational for new ordering
    • COMP1511 + ε ... how to program
    • COMP6721 ... how to program better and demonstrate "correctness"
    • SENG2011 ... how to automate the processes in COMP6721
    • COMP2111 ... theoretical basis for tools in SENG2011
    Queries about the order and whether it would work
    FR: focus on whether the order makes sense, then worry about "packaging" as courses
    TK: does this require a change to SE core?
    FR: no ... these courses form a "specialisation" in SE JAS: cannot be a "specialisation" in the formal sense of "major" Queries about the order and whether it would work
    FR: focus on whether the order makes sense, then worry about "packaging" as courses
    TK: does this require a change to SE core?
    FR: no ... these courses form a "specialisation" in SE
    JAS: cannot be a "specialisation" in the formal sense of "major"
    AB: suggests sequence problematic for non-SE students
    CM: COMP6721 needs to more people capable of teaching it ... can't assume CM will do it permanently
    FR: mentioned SE revision later in the year ... called for people to contribute to working groups

  5. New Course: COMP6772

    Re-visiting a proposal for a new C++ course, which may involve a revision of COMP6771.

    CDB presented the syllabus for proposed course (C++ + SE + ...)
    CDB: important aspect is ongoing contribution to C++ open source projects
    CDB: Google restricted licence policy needed for that CDB could run the course at all
    JAS: how long will CDB be available to teach? can anyone else teach?
    Bootstrapping problem: finding tutors for first offering
    WW: much of the course is SE; why is this not covered in SENG courses
    CDB: more focus on tools than processes
    WW: how can you teach ethics in 1 week?
    CDB: focus on one topic area in ethics
    CDB: ethics currently condensed into COMP4920; should be distributed
    JP: isn't tying closely to current technologies bad?
    CDB: but course is run by a practicing engineer who can adapt to technology changes
    SS: objective of course is not clear? is it C++? SE?
    CDB: objective: extend knowledge of C++ and look at how used in industry


  6. Course Offerings 2022

    It's time to start planning for next year. One significant planned change is to run COMP1521, COMP1531 and COMP2511 in every term. We should also try to balance the number of courses offered in each term; at present we have too many courses in T3, relative to the other terms.

    Deferred to next meeting.


  7. Assessment Practices in CSE

    We received several major complaints from students this term

    • final exam too much work for 2-hours
    • no information given about final exam format
    • no sample exam given (similar to above point)
    • assignment/project marks not available before exam

    We need to do better. Need more serious review of exams.

    JAS: small rant about exams: get them reviewed, test them, give a sample exam
    JAS: complaints from students about marks not available before exams
    TK: not feasible to mark 1000 assignments submitted in Week 10 before exams
    JAS: needs to be communicated to students


  8. Any Other Business


  9. Chat from Zoom meeting

    Chat transcript from the meeting ... to work out what questions were asked when responder (usually JAS) didn't make this clear.