Minutes of Teaching Commitee Meeting of 27 April 2001

1. Proposal by IROB to teach COMP4920 Professional Issues and Ethics for us. It was decided to proceed with the proposal from IROB, subject to revisions, on the basis that IROB would teach COMP4920 for two years and that at the end of that time there would be a comparison of the outcomes of COMP4920 and of SENG4921 (allowing for the difference in uoc between these two).

2. Modification to CS Honours requirements: [Tim L]
   Proposal accepted in principle. Tim and Bill to work out details of any new course proposals needed, and forward them to the Faculty Education Committee.

3. [gernot] Students teaching courses
   It was resolved that strenuous efforts would be made to avoid an all-student lineup for a major summer session course in future. In any case where a PhD student teaches part of a course, more extensive supervision would be mandatory, and the amount of teaching limited to reduce adverse effects on the student's research.

   This conclusion was reached in the context of PhD students lecturing as casual academic staff, or to use up "top-up" hours. The case with lecturers A and up, whether fractional or not, who are enrolled for a research degree, may be different, though the same outcomes are desired (i.e. good teaching, good administration, and good research.)

   Note also that the committee is not suggesting that the students who ran COMP1021 over the summer did not do a good job, nor that the academic to whom they were responsible did not do all that was reasonable. The committee's concern was more with what might have gone wrong, including potential adverse effects on the PhD students' research.

4. [gernot] Modification of course content by LiC

   Future changes to be approved by Associate Head of School. Cassandra Nock will be asked to remind academic staff in the middle of each session to send a formal proposal for any change to be approved as outlined above. Changes affecting courses which use the changed course as a prerequisite will be discussed by the TC, and should be discussed with the lecturers of affected courses before the proposal is sent.

5. Proposal from ITTI for advanced standing/entry for their diplomates.

   Any advanced standing would be on a course-by-course basis, as with current arrangements with the Singapore Polytechnics, and would be reviewed in the light of experience with students from ITTI. Lecture materials sent by ITTI would be reviewed by lecturers of similar CSE courses. Admission, again as with the Singapore Polytechnics, would subject to attainment of a minimum standard in the ITTI diploma. This standard would also be reviewed in the light of experience with students from ITTI.

6. New course proposal: [Kai E] Concurrency course. Proposal details are here.

   Approved subject to revisions. Revised version will appear here when ready.

7. Modifications to SMS to support new University requirements.
   There are now requirements that (1) we must inform students of their rank in each CSE course they take, and (2) we may not post results on office door or web pages - we must instead e-mail provisional results to students.
   The TC affirmed the urgency of the changes, though it was noted that an easy way to comply with (2) via sms is to make their final mark visible via "classrun -enquire".

8. Confirmation of courses to run in session 2, 2001, along with specification of quotas, if any, for these courses.

   The quota information will be forwarded the School Student Office and is also here.

9. IEAust Accreditation: Ken and Bill have been working on this, and will briefly outline the state of play.
   Draft of CE accreditation document. Prompt comments are solicited.

10. [JMP] Report on First Year Streaming in 1011/1711 and C/Systems in 1021
    John Potter and Richard Buckland described the experience so far, and presented histograms of the results from a common mid-session quiz.

11. [OD] Proposal for the reorganisation of Digital Systems Structures (COMP2021) and laboratory support for the understanding of digital systems structures and design.
    The proposal was approved from an educational point of view. This proposal has significant resource consequences. A slightly revised proposal will be considered next by the Computing Facilities Committee.

At this point the meeting adjourned until 2pm next Friday 4 May when the teaching allocation will be considered. At that point in time, some offers in the current round of academic hiring will have been made. It is believed that some of the offerees may be able to start in session 2, and so contribute to a solution to the allocation problems for that session.

• Teaching allocation for session 2. Draft is here. Major issues are who will teach COMP1021, COMP2011, and summer session courses.

School of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052, AUSTRALIA
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