Department of Computing – Macquarie University
Minutes for the 200-level Liaison Meeting
12th August 2015 at 1pm in E6A357
Students Representatives (SR)
Units
Wen Jun Liang
Sebastian Villafana-Soto
Jessica Dinh
Tim Bishop
Aaron Zimmerman
Daniel Tran
Adrian Kane
Rowan Walker
Martin Appleton
COMP255
COMP255, COMP229
COMP202
COMP202, ISYS224
COMP202, COMP255, COMP229
COMP229, ISYS224, COMP255, ISYS200
COMP255
COMP255, COMP229
COMP229, ISYS200, ISYS224
Staff Name
Role
Diego Mollá Aliod (DM)
Melina Chan (MC)
Natalia Salzberg (NS)
Matthew Mansour (MM)
Abhaya Nayak (AN)
Pongsak Suvanpong (PS)
Len Hamey (LH)
Annabelle McIver (AM)
Franck Cassez (FC)
Mike Johnson (MJ)
Scott Buckley (SB)
Chair (in place of Malcolm Ryan)
Executive Officer
Faculty IT Manager
ISYS200
ISYS224
COMP202
COMP202
COMP229
COMP255
COMP255
Minutes
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The meeting was opened at 1:05pm by Diego Molla Aliod.
ISYS200 – IT and the Future of Society
Matthew Mansour
SR commented that he didn’t like the fact that the lectures were at night time. MM
responded that it was previously a day lecture, but they have to alternate between
day and night lectures.
SR said that everything was going well so far. SR liked the structure of the in-class
assessments, and the first lecture had been fun.
SR asked if there would be a high word-count on assessments as had been in ISYS100
the previous semester/year. MM responded that the word count had been brought
down relative to ISYS100. SR had a question about a clerical inconsistency regarding
assignment specification between the unit guide and the assessment specification,
and MM advised to follow the assessment specification.
COMP202 – Systems Programming
Len Hamey
SR had a comment note about night lectures being difficult to focus in, especially for
three hour lectures. The breaks in the lectures were helpful, but SR said he was having
difficulty absorbing information for three hours straight. MJ input that it was unlikely
that three hour evening lectures would continue in future for any units.
SR was enjoying lectures, but was having difficulty with the required readings which
had been from a supplementary textbook which the SR did not own. LH responded
that the optional textbook is indeed optional, and that the readings had been to assist
in learning C, and that there are many other resources freely available on the internet
to teach C programming.
SR noted that Saturday lectures were helpful because students’ timetables are often
very open on Saturdays.
SR commented that auto-marking of assignments was helpful as students were able
to preview their assignment marks on subsequent submissions and improve their
work.
ISYS224 – Database Systems
Abhaya Nayak
SR was enjoying the format of the teaching, with a one-hour review every week.
SR would have appreciated further workshop time dedicated to PowerDesigner. AN
commented that there was a reasonable amount of work with PowerDesigner in the
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previous unit, and SR commented that this was at the beginning of the previous unit
which was quite a while ago, so a recap might be helpful. AN commented that there
was a diagnostic test coming up which was designed to give students feedback before
the census date. AN also noted that students didn’t necessarily need to use
PowerDesigner to draw their diagrams; they could use any drawing tool. AN asked SR
how the diagnostic test was, and SR responded that he had only done some basic
groundwork on the test.
AN asked how tutorial and practical classes were going, and SR responded that his
tutor was very knowledgeable and helpful, and that recently there had been some
review work which had been helpful. SR input that the lectures had been great so far,
particularly that the teaching format (concepts first half, case study second half) had
been very beneficial for learning. SR noted that splitting tutorial and practical classes
(in terms of their content) had been very helpful.
SR had a concern about the recommended readings table being in the unit guide and
not directly available in iLearn.
SR had a comment that while the lectures were great, the lecturer occasionally had to
go back to earlier slides which made it seemed like the slides were not laid out in the
best way to facilitate delivery. AN, having talked to the the instructor, informed that
in a database course it was often unavoidable since one had to draw the students'
attention to the example slide which was shown earlier.
COMP229 – Object Oriented Programming Practices
Annabelle McIver
SR noted that he had had difficulty finding a reading schedule in the unit guide. AM
responded that the weekly workshop documents should have reading
recommendations in them.
SR said that some of these contained links to external documents and were somewhat
scattered; that a centralized reading schedule (in the unit guide or similar) would be
useful for students who wanted to do regular readings.
SR commented that he appreciated the tutorial sheets, but that they were somewhat
“out-of-order” with the timings of lectures and tutorial classes, making it unclear
which questions related to which classes.
SR was also having a hard time figuring out which questions were required to be
submitted each week. SR noted that the lectures were very slow, and that a two hour
lecture covered a level of content that SR believed could be covered in 10 minutes.
AM commented that there were lots of different levels of programming competence
within the cohort and that it was difficult to find a pace that would work for everybody,
but this comment would be passed on to the lecturer. SR commented that the notes
provided had been very helpful for self-learning.
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ISYS255 – Software Engineering
Mike Johnson
SR asked about the reading material for lectures; that some students might want to
know ahead of time what content would be covered in a lecture. MJ responded that
there was some intentionality to this, to keep students engaged, but that he would
take this recommendation on board.
SR commented that he found the lectures extremely enjoyable, and thanked MJ for
his energetic delivery.
SR commented that workshops seemed to be reiterating what had been presented in
lecturers, and MJ responded that this was only for the first few weeks, and would not
continue from week three onwards.
MJ asked about the weekly work, and SR responded that they were fun and helpful.
Labs and General Discussion
SR asked if the lab timetables were visible online. MC responded that they were on
the timetable website.
SR commented that the printing quota taskbar icon was not visible on the lab
computers this semester, so he was unable to find out how many pages he could print.
SR mentioned that there were sometimes outside events recommended in lectures,
and asked if there was any central repository of information about such events. SB
and NS recommended meetup.com, and MJ shared that some events were invite-only,
for members of professional organisations, and that these would continue to be
shared in lectures.
SR asked about accessing research papers and articles on the library website. SRs and
staff discussed how the use of the research tools on the library website, as well as how
to link a student ID to Google Scholar to gain access to Macquarie’s academic
subscriptions.
SR suggested that providing PDF formatted lecture slides be made standard
procedure. SRs and staff discussed the advantages and disadvantages to providing
one-slide-per-page and multiple-slides-per-page documents to students.
SR shared that he had seen a lecture in the accounting department called “a day in
the life of an accountant”, which educated accounting students on what the common
daily tasks were for a professional accountant. SR asked if this might be possible for
computer scientists, software developers and the like. NS responded that students
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(especially female students) would be very welcome to spend some time with the
Science IT department learning about what they do there. NS also commented that
there was often some casual work available, especially just before the beginning of a
new semester, for computing students, which would be a very educational
experience. NS encouraged any computing students to contact her if interested in this
kind of opportunity.
The meeting was closed at 1:50pm by Diego Molla Aliod.
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