Teaching and Learning Committee

1999 Teaching Report

Compiled and prepared by N. Spadaccini and J.S. Rohl

1. Introduction
2. Our staff
   1. The current staffing
   2. Resignations and appointments
   3. Promotions
   4. Professional recognition
   5. Leave
   6. Staffing profile
3. Our undergraduate degrees
   1. Bachelor of Science
   2. Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
   3. Major changes for 1999
4. Our undergraduate students
   1. TES cut-offs
5. Undergraduate units taught
   1. Participation in these units
   2. Performance across these units
6. Our honours programme
   1. Major changes for 1999
7. Our honours students
8. Honours units taught
   1. Honours unit statistics
   2. Honours theses' abstracts
9. Honour board
10. Next year
    

1 Introduction

The Department of Computer Science is now 22 years old. Below is a potted history of the development of its teaching activities.

• It was founded in 1976 as a department of the Faculty of Science.
• It commenced teaching in 1977 with a second-year unit called Computer Science 200.
• In 1978 it introduced Computer Science 300 (and consequently the Computer Science major).
• In 1979 the honours programme was instituted.
• In 1981 a partial first-year unit Computer Science 101 was introduced - it was a component of Mathematical Sciences 100, the time not being propitious for the introduction of a full-sized unit. In subsequent years both Computer Science 200 and Computer Science 300 had to be redesigned in the light of its introduction.
• In 1984 the first-year unit Computer Science 100 was introduced, which necessitated the redesign in subsequent years of both Computer Science 200 and Computer Science 300.
• In 1987 a second major, Information Technology, was introduced with the mounting of Information Technology 310.
• In 1991 the whole Computer Science programme was semesterised, each year-long unit being broken down into 6-point (in the new points scale) semester-length components.
• In 1992 the Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (BCM) was introduced.
• In 1994 the Department moved to the newly created (then Division now) Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Science, forming, with the Department of Mathematics, the School of Mathematics and Computer Science. It still has a large commitment to teaching within the Faculty of Science.
• In 1995 semesterisation was partially undone, with the creation of the core year-long, first-year unit Foundations of Programming 120. This was followed in 1996 by the second-year companion Programming Structures 220.
• In 1998, Java was introduced into the first-year programme.
• In 1999, the department was reviewed, and recommendations from that review will have a significant impact on our teaching programmes from year 2000 and beyond.

2 Our staff

The current staffing

The academic staff during 1999 consisted of 14 people - all with PhDs. Below we give a list of all those in post at some time during the year, together with the qualifications as they stood at the end of the year.

Professors

Associate Professors

Senior Lecturers

Contract Lecturer

Resignations and appointments

There were no resignations or appointments in 1999.

Promotions

Associate Professor R.A. Owens was promoted to Professor.

Dr A. Datta, Dr P.D. Kovesi and Dr C.K. MacNish were all promoted to Senior Lecturer.

Professional recognition

Leave

Six members of staff took leave during the year.

Name	Type of leave	Period
Associate Professor Tsang	various	January - December
Dr McDonald	Long service leave	April - June
Dr MacNish	Sabbatical leave	July - December
Associate Professor Thomas	Sabbatical leave	July - December
Dr While	Sabbatical leave	July - December
Dr Royle	Leave without pay	July - December

Staffing profile

The changes to our staff profile over our life-time are highlighted in the graph below. It shows the number of staff at each level at the time the Faculty Handbook went to press for the following year (for example the 1999 data is taken from the 2000 Handbook, which is published sometime in November 1999). There will be minor discrepancies and inconsistencies since publication dates have varied, and the promotion system has undergone significant changes. The trend is clear, our profile is becoming increasingly "senior" and some effort needs to be made in appointing younger staff members to ensure stable transitions with upcoming retirements and possible resignations.

After a significant decline in the number of staff that dating back to 1993, the number of academic staff has been 14 for the past two years.

The redistribution of staff to higher levels has continued. The Senior Lecturer band continues to grow and the Lecturer band has narrowed accordingly. There have been no Assistant Lecturers in the department since 1997. The graph also shows the "average" appointment level of the staff. This is obtained by associating 1 with Assistant Lecturers, 2 with Lecturers, and so on; then calculating the numerical average. The monotonic increase since 1993 continues and the level now is above Senior Lecturer. (Between 1991-1996 the average level was Lecturer.)

The student-staff ratio has been steadily increasing since 1994 an is now at 21.4. It is the highest student-staff within our resourcing faculty, and the 9th highest ratio amongst the 52 UWA academic organisational units. However if one considers the rate of change in the student-staff ratio over the last 5 years (1995-1999) at UWA then this department is surpassed only by the Graduate School of Management, whose SSR has increased from 18.9 to 31.0 in this period. Almost all other academic units have an SSR which is steady or in decline. The table below gives the raw data of staff and student numbers, the latter including research students.

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Teaching Staff 18 23 20 19 16 15 14 14 Students 341 311 263 270 296 281 275 299 SSR 18.9 13.5 13.2 14.2 18.5 18.7 19.6 21.4 Source: UNISTATS Data and Faculty Handbooks

3 Our undergraduate degrees

The department offers units and majors in two degrees, the Bachelor of Science (BSc) and the Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (BCM). A significant number of the BSc students are taking the double BSc/BE degree. As well all students in the Bachelor of Cognitive Science (BCogSci) take the first-year Computer Science unit, and may major in Computer Science. It is also possible to complete majors from this department within the Bachelor of Commerce degree.

In both degrees there are three major streams of study offered by the department - Computer Science with focus on programming languages and the theory of computing; Information Technology Applications with an emphasis on applications of information technology ; and Information Technology Systems with an emphasis on computer systems.

To claim a major in one of the the areas, a student must pass in 3 units from the relevant list below and a fourth from either of the lists or as approved by the Head of the Department. Note that two of the units, Neural Computation 407 and Computer Vision 412, are nominally Honours units, and three others, Concurrent Programming 304, Databases 313 and Software Engineering 314 appear in two lists.

Bachelor of Science (BSc)

The BSc was the original degree, and is still a popular choice with our students. Students in the programme are required to take one major, which must be from within the faculty of Science. Many choice to take a second major, again this must be from within the faculty of Science. There is a wide range of majors available within the faculty, and it is possible to undertake limited units from outside the Faculty of Science.

Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (BCM)

The BCM is a relatively new degree, founded within the Faculty of Science, but now coming under the auspices of the Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. It is a special degree requiring depth - students must take 2 majors and must do both Mathematics and Computer Science in each of their first two years but allowing for breadth in that one of the chosen majors may be from outside the faculty. The majors available are:

Major changes for 1999

Every year there are minor changes to the content and format of all units as co-ordinators respond to their previous experiences and to changes in the environment. We do not comment on them here. In 1999 there were no significant changes.

4 Our students

A table of the undergraduate student enrolments from 1992 is given below. It considers only the students with which this report is concerned - those in the Bachelors degrees and the Honours students.

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Years 1-3 284 257 221 220 250 232 232 258 Honours 21 15 15 16 15 23 25 25 Total teaching 305 272 236 236 265 255 257 283 Source: UNISTATS Data

The honours EFTSUs are approximately 10% of the total, and have an effect only at the margin. In 1999 the number of EFTSUs grew considerably to 283, a trend which is expected to continue given the significant changes earmarked for our teaching programme in year 2000.

A feature of Australian education over the last decade has been the introduction of full fees for overseas students. Below we give a table of the full-fee and HECS-paying students since 1992.

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Local 211 189 175 185 207 201 207 225 Full-fee 94 83 61 51 58 54 50 58 Total 305 272 236 236 265 255 257 283 Source: UNISTATS Data

In the last 5 years the number of full-fee paying students has remained steady, at approximately 55.

TES/TER cut-offs

As noted before, most of our students enroll in either the BCM, the BSc, or the joint BSc/BE degrees. The cut-off scores for these degrees from 1987 (or the year in which the degree programme was introduced) to 1998 (the year in which the use of scores was deprecated) are given below. From 1999 onwards an entrance (percentile) ranking rather than score is being used. We include these new ranking as a separate graph.

Because of changes to the requirements for a TES score in 1992, and the changing proportion of the age cohort who take the Tertiary Entrance examination, it is hard to interpret these figures. The changes introduced in 1999 makes it impossible to easily compare changes in incoming cohort abilities. However the gap between the single-degree students and the BSc/BE students, is clear and significant.

5 Undergraduate units taught in our programmes

The handbook entries for the undergraduate units taught this year are available from the university publishing unit (www.publishing.uwa.edu.au/handbooks/1999/). They are supplemented with an Information Sheet provided by the unit co-ordinator and with detailed information provided through our departmental undergraduate web site (undergraduate.cs.uwa.edu.au). An overview of the teaching programme is given below.

As mentioned earlier, students may replace one unit of a major with another relevant unit, with the approval of the Head of the Department.

Participation in these units

Below is a table of the degree being undertaken by students in 1999 across all the units.

These figures reflect previous experience. If we ignore the enrichment units, it is clear that the proportion of BCM students increases as the students progress through the degree. This is to be expected since the BCM is the specialist degree. On the other hand the BSc students decline in numbers as the students choose their majors across the faculty. The percentage of joint degree students remains fairly constant. It is noticeable that these students do not participate in the enrichment units: this is due to their very tight timetable.

Below is a table of the percentage of female students across all the units. All numbers are percentages.

Three observations stand out from the data listed above,

• The proportion of first-year students who are female has increased to 34% in 1998 and has returned to around the 25% mark observed in previous years.
• The proportion of CS300 and IT315 students who are female slumped in 1998, but has recovered to a number consistent with other 3rd year units.
• In 1999 the second year enrichment units CS226 and CS226 saw a marked increase in the percentage of students who are female. This may be a flow on effect from the high female numbers observed in the 1998 first year cohort.
• There has been a marked increase the proportion of female students in CS301 and a steady drop in this proportion in CS304. No reason for this is immediately obvious.

Performance across these units

The figures in this section are taken from the results returned to the Examinations Office. There may be some irregularities due to students with deferred examinations, students who are granted a supplementary examination, or students who marks have been subsequently adjusted. However these have a minor effect on the trends. The corresponding figures from 1996 are included for comparison.

Unit enrolments

The enrolment numbers (excluding all withdrawals) are given below.

The scale has been fixed so that it is appropriate for the majority of our units and as a consequence, CS120 is way off scale.

• The numbers for both core and enrichment first-year units have increased quite considerably this year, by 20% and 13% respectively. This represents a recovery to the 1997 first year numbers.
• The numbers for all the second-year units are uniformly lower than last year. This is the flow on effect from the low first year numbers observed in 1998.
• The third year units are consistently higher, reflecting the higher first year numbers in 1997 and a strong retention rate across years. Our IT subjects are decidedly more popular with the students and the introduction of the IT(Systems) major has seen a marked increase in student numbers for IT312 (Computer Networks) and IT316 (Operating Systems).

Pass rates

The pass rates for all the units are given below.

We can make the following observations.

• Almost without exception, the pass rates are the highest ever.
• We are converging on pass rates of low to mid 80s in first year, mid to high 80s in second year units and pass rates in the 90s for third year units.
• The most significant exceptions to this trend are the third year subject CS302 and the third/fourth year subjects CS407 and CS412. No reason can be identified for the first unit but the other units present material to a wider mixture of academic abilities and experience. One needs to investigate what changes may have occurred.

Median scores

The median scores for all the units are given below.

We can make the following observations.

• All units have median scores in the acceptable range.

Standard deviation

The standard deviations for all the units are given below.

We can make the following observations.

• Except for some obvious anomalies, there is a great deal of consistency across the units, with the standard deviation being in the 15-19 range.
• Generally the standard deviation is dropping across years, as one expects the variation across student abilities to drop. There are notable exceptions, CS301 and CS302 where perhaps the theoretical nature of the material covered is exposing different student abilities, those more capable of conceptualization and abstraction and those more inclined toward programming and software management.
• CS407 is a dramatic outlier.

Unit classifications

The proportion of students awarded the 5 classifications for all the units are given below.

The classifications reflect the pass rates, median scores and standard deviations of the units, as you would expect. We may need to consider the acceptability of the wide variation in HD classes awarded from 3% in Introduction to Human Computer Interaction 225 to ~30% in Foundations of Programming 120 and Robotics 315.

6 Our honours programme

The honours programme is an optional 4th year that is available to students who pass the undergraduate degree at a sufficiently high level. It is available as both BCM(hons) and BSc(hons), and in each the honours may be in either Computer Science or Information Technology.

Major changes for 1999

Project assessment

Seminar assessment

7 Our honours students

Since honours is a coherent programme, we can give an overall picture, which is not possible with the undergraduate teaching. Nevertheless we must bear in mind the fact that part-time honours is now possible, as is splitting the degree across calendar years. Thus there is no longer a one-to-one relationship between enrolment numbers and EFTSUs. In 1999 3 students graduated in mid-year, and 3 others will not complete until mid 2000. In what follows we count all students who appear on either the June or the November 1999 examination registers. The number of graduations will, of course, sometimes be less than this.

Below we give a table of the first degree followed by the students before enrolment in honours.

The graph shows that the number of BSc degree students in honours is small. and that the bulk of our honours students come from the BCM programme, forming over 60% of the total enrolment. The joint BSc/BE students represent 25% of the total honours enrolment.

As we offer honours in two disciplines, Computer Science and Information Technology, in two degrees it is helpful to see how student choice might vary.

The preference for Information Technology is overwhelming.

Below we give a table of the students' sex.

	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999
female	5	1	1	1	1	1	7	6
male	15	14	14	13	14	19	20	18

Between 1993 and 1997 the story was pretty depressing. In 1999 the proportion was 25%, in line with the improvement found in 1998, and consistent with third-year proportions. Whether the 1993-97 period or the 1998-99 period is the aberration is not clear yet.

Below is a table of the funding source for the students since 1995.

Degrees awarded

We can make the following observations.

• H3 degrees are now being awarded in line with university policy that a third-class degree is "a respectable degree".
• The proportion of H1 degrees is back to the norm of more recent years.
• In 1999 the student cohort had an increased number of students from the "tail" of the distribution, resulting in a movement of students from the 2A classification into the 2B and H3 classifications.

8 Honours (fourth-year) units taught

Students undertaking the honours programme must take 5 units (worth 12.5% each) and a project worth 37.5%. The units offered are listed below. Scientific Communication 405 is compulsory.

Honours unit statistics

The enrolments of honours students in these units is given below.

There are a number of factors to be considered when interpreting these numbers.

• Both Programming Methodology 401 and Advanced Graphics 413 include students from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, so that the total number of students in each unit is greater than shown above.
• Both Neural Computation 407 and Computer Vision 412 are available to third-year students.

There has been a marked drop in the number of honours students participating in Algorithms for AI 411. These students are likely to have chosen the Software Quality and Reliability unit presented by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

The means (not medians!) are given below.

The mean for honours units is traditionally in the mid-70s. In 1999 the means for Visualisation 413 increased significantly.

Honours theses' abstracts

The titles of this year's honours dissertations are listed below.

9 Honour board

Below we record those of our students who were recognised by the university in the offering of scholarships, by the faculties in the awarding of faculty prizes, and by the department in nominating the dux of each of the units we mount.

10 Next year

Each year changes are made to units to reflect our experience and the feedback we receive from a number of sources. We do not detail them all here. However, for year 2000 there are several major change of interest.

Consequences of several department and degree reviews.

The Departments of Computer Science and of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the BCM have all been recently reviewed and the consequences to the teaching programme are significant. All units are to be semesterised. There is to be a shift in emphasis toward systems in the CS1 and CS2 teaching years. The Department of Computer Science will begin teaching units to the School of Engineering. We will introduce and administer a new degree, the BE (Software Engineering) with participation form the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. A new Computer Science degree is to be introduced, BCompSci.