School of Computer Science Wiki

please add your agenda items as you think of them. The 'edit this page' link is in the upper right.

1. Curriculum Chair - Michael Elected
2. CIS*1500 Textbook - zybooks pretty expensive but we“ll try it for one year.
3. Calendar housecleaning (Joe, Greg)
   1. remove mentions of old courses
   2. document prerequisite structure
4. Curriculum choices document-
5. Follow up with engineering about the 3490 pre-req and the 3110 pre-req and then get those changes made (Judi)
6. What needs to be done with existing mobile major (Mike, Judi)
7. To Do sometime soon list
   • What makes a major? Where is the actual documentation?
   • Lab components for courses
   • Coop schedule
   • Learning Outcomes
   • Core Course Consistency - Dean and Director confirm that it is a necessary thing

* writing motions from the school council meeting Feb 24 council meeting talking points

Motion: CIS*1500 should be taught in a language which fosters advanced problem solving skills rather than learning of syntax. The committee recommends that the CIS*1500 instructors choose a language with a python-like syntax. The choice will be reported back to the curriculum committee by March 1. (carried unanimously)

1. CIS 1500 Exemption
   • Proposal for a 1 year trial where incoming students may come on campus in July to write a programming exam. Students who pass the exam will be given an exemption for cis 1500 and will not have to take it. A fall offering of CIS 2500 will be added. Students who take 2500 in the fall will be able to take cis 3110 in the winter and then will join the regular stream of students.
   • advantages include: splitting the novices and those with training up in cis 1500, providing a no-cost way for students to repeat cis 2500 if necessary as this does not cost any teaching tasks.
   • the plan is to propose this to an LEF for funding to cover the costs of running the exam in the summer and the worst-case costs of hiring an additional person to teach one section of 1500 in the fall.
2. Add cis 3490 as a required course to the soft eng program
3. This requires changing the prerequisite for 3490 from 2910 to 1910 as soft eng students only take 1910
4. Move the semesters that 1910 and 2910 are offered so that 1910 is offered first semester and 2910 is offered second semester
   • this ensures that students get the logic instruction when they are first learnign to program
   • it does mean that instructors of 1910 may have to adjust their teaching to accommodate first semester learning needs.
5. Remove math 1200 from the computer science program.
6. Replace it with a course specific for computer science on problem solving. The problem solving course will be neither mathematically based nor programming based, but more about applied problem solving and decomposition of problems

• 1500/2500 - exemption
• 1910 f/ 2910 winter
• coop schedule
• web dev course, linear alg
• remove calculus
• area of application
• language in 1500
• mobile area of application

• The Areas of Application and Minors, in order of popularity are: Business Administration, Math, Marketing Management, Music, Psychology, Economics, English, Statistics, Philosophy, Criminal Justice and Public Policy, Geography, History, and French.
• This may be more of a Program Committee discussion, but the Calendar descriptions is:
• An Area of Application normally consists of 4.00 credits (normally 8 courses) of a minor. Minors are described under the B.A. and B.Sc. programs. Access to some courses may be limited. Minors are listed in Section X of the Calendar. A student may complete a minor should they decide to do so.
• If we wanted to include CIS courses in the AofA we have to be careful with double counting them (towards the degree and the AofA).

• Review state of in-progress items
• Co-op Work sequence: Double check academic sequence. Confirm whether we need summer academic semester.
• Move of CIS*1500 to a new language

- reviewed in progress items. Judi to meet Patricia T tomorrow. - mobile sequence, we need to have the courses in place before we can design the sequence.

• it is a benefit for out students to go out on coop in second year
• 8 month work terms are a benefit
• 100 student cap is likely if we stay with current coop sequence.
• committee to work on different possibilities for next week

-CIS1500 move to python

• top tier us schools have moved
• research shows that it would not hurt them
• allows for more complex problem solving
• portfolio building
• web course in second semester…

• Review Current State
• Create list of tasks and action items
• Prioritize list
• Allocate tasks for highest priority item(s)
• Choose regular meeting day and time