Department of Computing Macquarie University Minutes for the 200-level Liaison Meeting 14 th May 2015 at 1pm in E6A357

Transcription

1 Department of Computing Macquarie University Minutes for the 200-level Liaison Meeting 14 th May 2015 at 1pm in E6A357 Students Name Andy Thompson Daniel Tran Martin Appleton Phil Madin Ilya Miller Units, COMP260, COMP249, ISYS254 Staff Name Len Hamey Christophe Doche Fiona Yang Natalia Salzberg Damian Jurd Michael Johnson Ian Joyner Steve Cassidy Annabelle McIver Mark Dras Malcolm Ryan Michael Hitchens Stephen Smith Deborah Richards Scott Buckley Role Chair Head of Department Department Administrator Faculty IT Manager Faculty IT, COMP249 COMP260 COMP260 ISYS254 ISYS254 Minutes Page 1

2 The meeting was opened at 1:05pm by Len Hamey. Algorithms and Data Structures Annabelle McIver SR said he was enjoying the unit. There were a few issues with the weekly code bundles; they hadn t been correctly importing into Eclipse due to the archive structure. SR and other students had got it working this week though. SR had also heard from other students that the second half of the unit had been harder than the first half, but SR had personally found it easier. Another SR commented about the group work. SR had been having trouble in the past with his group members not contributing to the work, and this problem had gotten worse since the last liaison meeting. SR asked for advice on how to deal with this issue. MD suggested that the amount of work set each week should be feasible for one student to complete, so students should be able to get it done without help. AM shared that the two goals of group work are collaboration and improved marking feedback. AM explained that, due to the wiki tracking changes, marks will be adjusted at the end of semester so that students who did not contribute work would not get marks and vice versa. SR shared that the group format had been positive at times; discussing the work with his peers had helped to consolidate his understanding of the content. MD shared that there are many different ways to tackle working as a team, and it seemed that SR had found an effective one. Data Communications Mike Johnson SR said that the course had been very interesting; the practical classes had been particularly useful. He had been having trouble revising sometimes, but said that he intended to meet up with some teachers to help out with his revision. LH asked if the stuff is accessible to him. SR said yes, and the challenge lay in juggling his time between the other units he was studying. LH asked who is lecturing, and MJ responded that he was taking all of the lectures this semester. SR shared that sometimes the lectures had been going over time, but that this was due to the nature of the content, and did not suggest that the lectures be changed in any way. Another SR shared that the extension that had been granted for the assignment had been very helpful to him. He was very happy with the unit so far, but was surprised that there wasn t more practical experience with the routers. SR reiterated that he was very much enjoying the lectures. LH asked what was happening in the labs that wasn t router work. SR responded that there was other work they were doing, but that he felt that there weren t many tasks in lab lessons, and suggested that more tasks be assigned. DJ shared that he had been noticing that the cohort was a very mixed bag of students; that some students would benefit from extra work, but some students were barely coping with the existing workload. Even though the lab lessons are two hours long, time is still constrained due to the number of students attending. Page 2

3 IJ shared the concern that there was a high number of students in the lab lessons, but also noted that the students who had real-world experience were very helpful in assisting with the other students learning. Another SR shared that he d had no problems in the lab lessons. He had previously been experiencing trouble with group work, but in recent weeks had been benefiting greatly from the group structure. This SR also shared that he had been enjoying the lectures. He also shared that this was one of the first units he had taken where assignments were written work like proposals, and that he had come to realize that writing paper assignments was very helpful and very relevant to industry. MJ asked the students if they felt that the lectures had had too few or too many asides, and SRs agreed that the lectures were excellent as-is. COMP260 Game Design Malcolm Ryan SR shared that it had been difficult to get anything done on assignment three, which was a group task. MR responded that the task is too large to do at the last minute, as there is a checkpoint for partial completion of the assignment, as well as a large portion of the marks being allocated to testing, which is difficult to do last-minute. SR said that he had taken on the role of a de facto group leader, and asked if this is a reasonable method for handling group work. MR said that he didn t mind how students chose to get their work done, as long as all students are contributing equally to the project. SR had been using a wiki to allow the group to collaborate, and this had been working well. SR asked if he should try to organize a physical meeting. MR responded that, since the assignment was for a tabletop game, it was almost essential that the group get together to play the game to try it out, especially since they were teaching the students to use an iterative design loop. Some discussion was had about the number of students that attend each workshop; too many students had been turning up to each lab session. It was agreed that while this was inconvenient, the situation was difficult to avoid. MH had spent some time in tutorial classes asking the student how the practical classes were going. He had observed that the unit had many students enrolled in a BA, without any math backgrounds. MH considered this to be a serious problem when working with objects in 3D space. MH also shared that a he thought a single semester wasn t enough time to teach both design and implementation. CD asked, if there were two units, how this would work. MH said they could potentially have one unit for design, meaning on-paper design, and one unit on implementation, which would include kodu scripting etc. Page 3

4 COMP249 Web Technology Steve Cassidy SR shared that he loves web scripting, and this is one of his favourite units so far. SR mentioned that there was some code in the videos that covers scraping etc, and would like to have access to some of that code. SC responded that this probably wasn t a good idea, as he would like students to write their own code, instead of copy paste coding. SR had been enjoying the tutorials. There was only one test upcoming in the unit. SR had been enjoying the videos, particularly now that they were on YouTube. SC shared that having videos on YouTube helped by providing viewing statistics, and he was observing only 60/160 students watching videos per week, which is a problem. Discussion was held about the practical exams. SR had had some trouble with one question, but being able to access his notes during the exam was very helpful. SR asked if there would be any coding in the final written exam, and SC responded that there will be very little coding. A SR who was not enrolled in this unit had a question. He had done COMP115 in the past, when it was C++, and wasn t familiar with Java or Processing or Python. SR wanted to know if it would be difficult picking up another language, especially given that Python is loosely typed. SC shared that it is always a good thing to pick up a new language, and also shared that COMP125 will soon be a requirement for COMP249, and that the students who are comfortable with coding will be ok picking up Python. Also, Python is just at tool used in COMP249, and not the focus of the unit. ISYS254 Applications Modelling and Development Stephen Smith SR shared that, while initially being hesitant about the unit, thought it was a crucial unit to understand, and was appreciating the content he had been taught so far. Some students were worried that they would be learning PHP in only two weeks, and then having an assignment written in PHP. They were concerned that this was all moving too fast. DR responded that there wouldn t be any questions in the exam where students will be required to write PHP code. They might have to recognise some PHP code, but wouldn t be required to be proficient PHP coders. She wanted students to get their hands dirty so they could get their heads around the way PHP works. DR repeated that, in this unit, students don t need to be programmers, but do need to understand how systems work, and how they are implemented. DR asked if the workshops had been well-attended. SR said yes. General Discussion Page 4

5 SR shared that the air conditioning in the labs sometimes doesn t work, especially on weekends. He also shared that, during the week, there were often no seats available in the 200-level labs, particularly during the afternoon and evening. The 100- and 300- level labs often did have free seats, but 200-level students are unable to log in to the computers in these labs. CD shared that they had started to give 100-level students access to the 300-level labs, but giving all students access to all labs is a contentious topic. However, staff were already investigating potential solutions to the problem that SR had raised. LH asked if laptops were a good alternative to studying on lab computers, and SR responded that he finds it much easier to get work done on a desktop machine, due to its large and well-placed screen. LH closed the meeting at 2pm. Page 5