School of Computer Science and Software Engineering

Staff/Student Meeting - Clayton Campus

Sudad Abbas - 4th year SE, David Albrecht, Peter Atkinson, Nandita Bhattacharjee, Stanley Breskin - 3rd year SE, Mandy Cheng, John Connoll, Tim Conrad - Honours, Michael Derakshan - 1st year BL/BCompSc, Alan Dorin, Leeanne Evans, Karen Fenwick, Tim Ferguson, Kirsten Frederiksen - 2nd year BL/BCompSc, Maria Garcia de la Banda, Steve Gardner, Charles Greif, Lennart Gustafsson, Michael Ha - 3rd year CS, John Hurst, Nicholas Imrei - Honours, Carlo Kopp, Anthony Lun - Maths Dept, Kunal Mamik - 2nd year SE, Jon McCormack, Bernd Meyer, Kerri Morgan, James Nicholson - BSc/BCompSc, Andrew Paplinski, Debbie Pickett, Ronald Pose, Glen Pringle, Sita Ramakrishnan, Sid Ray, Satha Sathananthan, Bala Srinivasan, Peter Tischer

Apologies:
David Abramson, Nadejda Antanovskii - Honours SE, Tania Dastre - BA/BCompSc, Trevor Dix, Karan Juneja - 2nd year CS, Caroline McGregor, Bin Qiu, Lindsay Rattray - BA/BCompSc, Akram Saleh - 1st year SE, Heinz Schmidt, Nadia Silvestre - 4th year SE, Hayden Stainsby - 3rd year DS

HONOURS -

Action items from previous meeting -

Glen Pringle from TSU presented the following report:

Honours students are concerned that the quota on disk space is not enough to cope with requirements and asked if the quota could be increased.

Response - The message they receive when over quota tells them how to apply for an increase. This is not a problem. An upgrade to the server with additional disk space will be happening soon.

Feedback is that machines do not have enough memory which limits the way students complete their work.

Response - New machines are expected to arrive this week. These machines should be available for use shortly.

Students choosing to use their own laptops have found there are not enough laptop ports.

Response - My understanding is that more ports have been made available.

DigSys honours rep also reported complaints about the software available in the honours lab and asked about the possibility of installing their own software.

Response - It will never be possible to allow students to install their own software system wide. This will lead to an incredibly unstable system. We ask academics to provide us with a list of software needed before the start of the academic year. This enables us to ensure that there are no problems with the software. Additional requests for software (by academics and students) will be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Depending on the software and operating system, it is sometimes possible to install software under a user's own account.

Students would like a burner for cds

Response - The new PCs will have CD burners.

Students would like decent speakers or headphones for projects on sound.

Response - Students who require these can arrange to borrow them from technical services unit. We have previously provided speakers in the honours lab and they have either been stolen or damaged, hence the need for individuals to borrow them.

Honours Co-ordinator, Bernd Meyer advised that quotas in 2005 will be higher.

Mandy Cheng advised that new chairs have been supplied in the Honours Lab.

Honours Report - The following report was presented by the Honours Reps, Tim Conrad and Nick Imrei.

1) Evaluation Results
Links - Results of the evaluation:

http://beddoe-old.csse.monash.edu.au:8080/JSPWiki/linked_stuff/evaluation2004_sem1_hours_spent.pdf

http://beddoe-old.csse.monash.edu.au:8080/JSPWiki/linked_stuff/evaluation2004_sem1.pdf

Based on this evaluation sheet:

http://beddoe-old.csse.monash.edu.au:8080/JSPWiki/linked_stuff/evaluation2004.pdf

The evaluations shows two things:
a) The workload of a 3cr subject is nearly equal to the load of a 6cr subject. This should clearly not be the case. Furthermore, following the Monash rules, one credit points means a workload of two hours per week. This results roughly in 36 hours for a 3cr subject and 72 hours for a 6cr subject.
b) While ``Adv. Computer Graphics'', ``Bayesian Modeling'', and ``Pattern Recognition'' are evaluated with an significantly over average mark, ``Information Security'', ``Data & Image compression'', and ``System Validation & Verification'' get an average evaluation, and ``MML' is evaluated with a mark significantly under average.

2) Guidelines for supervisors
There were some complaints about supervisors who do not take meetings, appointments or due dates to seriously. Guidelines addressing these have been handed out to everyone at the first session at the starting at semester 1.
ACTION: Supervisor to be made aware of these complaints.

3) (After-Hour) Access to kitchen
Honours students asked if they can use the kitchen on the first floor of the STRIP building. ACTION: Students were advised that they can have responsible access to this areas. Mandy Cheng undertook to have Honours students swipecards changed to allow after hours access to the first floor.

4) Desk / Room for everyone
Some guys asked about having a desk in a room in the STRIP building where they can work in a more quiet atmosphere than in the honours lab. ACTION: Students were advised that due to space restrictions, honours students can not always be accommodated in research areas. The suggestion was made about dividing usage of the Honours areas in to a quiet studies area and more communicative area.

5) Redesign of 417 (Research Skills) and first introductory session
Some complaints have been raised concerning the structure, scheduling, and content of the sessions. ACTION: Honours Reps offered to organise a meeting with students and appropriate staff to discuss this unit. (Bernd Meyer and other unit co-ordinators)

6) Redesign of internet pages
Students reported that the internet pages of the Honours Course are sometimes not up to date and contain information from the last years. ACTION: If students advise which pages they are referring to, it will be looked in to.

7) New computers / software / more network ports / more quota - (refer Action Item response from last meeting)
Ten new computers are expected to be delivered this week - installation will be done progressively. They come with a CD-burner. Tech staff will consider the software list compiled by us in the last semester.

More network ports for laptops in the honours lab are requested at the ITS.

The disk space quota on bruce can be increased on demand if needed: Just write an email to the tech staff explaining why you need more disc space. Furthermore, there will be a server upgrade in the next weeks which will result in an increased quota anyway.

8) Printer maintenance
Students asked about supply of paper to the honours lab after hours. Students were advised to plan ahead in terms of stocking paper in the honours lab to avoid running out of paper after the general office has closed.
If the printer runs out of toner, write an eMail to the schools technical help desk system (tech@help.csse.monash.edu.au) with c.c. to clayhons@csse.monash.edu.au. This registers that a request has been made (avoids more than one request) and there is proof / time stamp of your query.

9) Obeying rules
Students advised that at the first session for CSE417 they were given some ``rules'' like attending 417 is compulsory, and they were concerned about attendance rules and hurdles not being taken seriously as attendances are not always taken. ACTION: Bernd Meyer will advise everyone from the staff to obey these rules more strictly in the future.

10) Lecture notes
There were some complaints about the quality and availability of lecture notes. ACTION: The students were advised that each lecturer him-/herself is in charge for his own lecture notes and these comments will be passed to the lecturers. Supply of lecture notes is not compulsory and is considered to be supplementary course material.

FOURTH YEAR -

Action items from last meeting -
Software in the MUSE lab is now o.k.

Students asked bout access to East Entrance of Building 26. ACTION: Mandy Cheng - advised 24 August that Security will change the programming to allow students who have access to south entrance to also have access to east entrance after hours.

Fourth year report -
Some computer in the new MUSE lab are not working properly and students would like speakers as they had in the old lab. ACTION: To be forwarded to Faculty IT Services

Telephone in new MUSE lab is not working. ACTION: Mandy Cheng - advised 24 August that the extension will not be reinstated as there is an emergency phone in the corridor to comply with safety requirements and that phones are not provided in other labs.

THIRD YEAR -

Action items from previous meeting -
CSE3134 Robotics has been made available to BDigSys students as a special offer.

Access to the Dig Sys Project Lab in Bld 63 after hours was implemented within two weeks of the last meeting and students are now happy.

Third year students asked about extra Student Staff Meetings. There will be two in semester 2, the next one on October 13.

Third Year Report -

Student reps reported that third year students are on the whole happy.

They reported printer problems in building 19. ACTION: Students were advised they should report problems to my.fit and the School will follow-up regarding routine checking of machines.

Students suggested the possibility of having tutorial books for subjects in third year that don't have tutorials.

Students had concerns about not knowing how to get information concerning graduation at the end of their course. ACTION: Karen Fenwick to post information regarding relevant web site on the third year notice boards.

Third year Software Engineering students received good feedback from last semester.

Student in CSE3323 Computer Industry were requesting a sample exam. Ronald Pose advised that one would be provided.

Students doing CSE4002 Studio Project were concerned that they would not be getting any feedback until week 10 when they thought that students could already be in trouble. Sita Ramakrishnan advised the presentation #2 is on September 20th and they will receive feedback about their presentation and content then. But they also receive feedback regularly on a weekly basis.

Optional tutorials in CSE3322 Programming Languages and Implementation are very popular with some sessions over-attended. The lecturer undertook to investigate the resourcing of extra tutorials. Students reported that the homework exercises were very useful and that more sample exam questions were required.

Discussion took place about past exams papers and their relevance to material presently being taught and the supply of sample exam papers.

SECOND YEAR -

Second year report -

CSE2302 Operating Systems - students appreciate the work done by Debbie Pickett the Assistant Lecturer for this unit. They raised the issue of different marking students between tutors and confusion with marking pracs and milestones. They asked when the assignment will be made available. Debbie Pickett advised that she will be dealing with the prac issues and that the assignment was available two days ago.

CSE2305 Object-oriented Software Engineering - students had concerns about the assignment being given out and having queries about how to program in C++ resulting in long queues at consultation with the ALs. They suggested better co-ordination between lectures and assignments.

CSE2325 Multimedia Programming and WWW. Students reported that this unit is good.

They also wanted to thank everyone for last semester and in particular the Assistant Lecturers for their consultation etc and helping to get them through the exams.

CSE2340 Algorithms and Data Structures - Students thought that the exam and lecture notes could have been better but consultation was good.

CSE2324 Computer Architecture sample exam was good.

General comments - second year students appreciate the newsgroups. Some complain about not enough Unix experience in first year and wanted to thank staff for their efforts last semester.

FIRST YEAR -

Action items from last meeting -

Toilets in building 19 were reported to the cleaning supervisor.

Students asked if lecturers could advise students in lectures if their unit has a newsgroup as some students weren't aware of them. Debbie Pickett advised that she will set up a newsgroup for any unit if it is not already set up.

Students asked if access to sng could be returned so they can have remote access. Debbie Pickett advised that raclay is identical and students don't need sng for remote access.

Associate Dean Teaching, John Hurst, advised that the Faculty has anonymous feedback which he can set up for units.

Students asked if Maths lectures can be recorded. The Maths Rep, Tony Lun, advised students to ask the lecturer at the next lecture and he would follow up as well.

CSE1303 Computer Science students were finding the pracs too difficult - Part B mostly. Students asked if solutions to tutorials could be posted. ACTION: Lecturer David Albrecht agreed to post tutorials solutions on the web.

Prof Srinivasan thanked everyone for their attendance and closed the meeting at 1.55 pm.

The next Student/Staff Meeting will be held on Wednesday 13 October 2004.