Minutes of Teaching Committee Meeting - 3 November 2000

1. Matters arising from the minutes of the last meeting:
   • A School TSP web page was to be made available. [Tim Lambert]
     Tim distributed draft web page content which was approved with minor suggested changes.

   • Review of plans for Potter Committee to present its report to the School at a School Meeting. [John Potter]
     It was confirmed that John will present an expanded report to the School Meeting on Thursday 9 November (1-2pm)

2. Requirements for class managers and associate lecturers for 2001. It has been suggested that enough class managers should be recruited to cover courses with an enrolment (in a particular session) over a threshold (possibly 300). Class Manager Job Spec
   The meeting considered that 3-4 class managers should be recruited provided adequately qualified persons could be found.

3. ELEC have, in JAS's words "bitten the bullet on 4th year Thesis vs Project and introduced a new Project subject for students with low averages (specifically, less than 65%)." This is somewhat consistent with the practice in the Advanced Science program and of course in Computer Science of only letting students with 65+ averages do honours. Do we want to review our policy on this?
   Current and proposed policies in this area were discussed at length. The meeting was advised that weaker students tend to self- select for group-oriented projects, and that there was evidence that the undergraduate average was a poor predictor of thesis outcome.
   The meeting confirmed that every full-time academic is expected to supervise 3-5 fourth year undergraduate projects. Steve Matheson can advise on ways to do this efficiently.

4. Quality assurance measures for teaching. Should we be having an extra person (perhaps a program coordinator or director of first year studies) acting in a specific quality assurance role for each course we offer?
   During another lengthy discussion, many suggestions but little consensus emerged on methods of quality control. Critical courses such as the large first and second year courses were especially important in terms of ensuring quality and adequate syllabus coverage. It will be important to make sure that assessment in corresponding higher and regular subjects is sufficiently consistent. One proposal to ensure this was the idea to coordinate the final exam so that there is a core of questions for both streams and some optional questions intended mainly but not exclusively for the higher stream.

5. Formal introduction of a new Special Project for talented students in Computer Science.
   This proposal was approved with a few modifications, the most significant being reduction of the standard project to 12 Units of Credit (COMP3902), and introduction of a second 6 UoC project (COMP3901)

6. Proposal for Master of Engineering Science in Mobile Systems.
   The general concept of such a joint program with Electrical Engineering was approved. The meeting expressed some concern about possible overlap with 8508/3000 MInfSc in Internetworking.

7. Teaching allocation revisited.
   The meeting advised on ways to tune the emerging allocation for 2001 session 1.

School of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052, AUSTRALIA
Phone:  +61 2 9385 6876
Fax:    +61 2 9385 4071