CR: Notes Fall 2012

November 2, 2012

Last time: discussed modules, what courses/topics should be in core

Third year topics

Old: 3000, 3004, 3005, 3007, 3804

New should be what?

Proposal by Doug: allow general degree-versions for all streams, make honours something for all students. Shouldn't be a fallback.

Note that this would make more students graduate under non-CIPS accredited degree. But how much does that matter?

Idea: divide not into Major and Honours, but Industry and Academic track.

Idea: no track split, simply make courses at third and fourth year all optional, just put constraint on how many courses to take.

Bottom-up design for 3rd and 4th year courses?

Need to keep CIPS accreditation for honours degree. Can new courses help satisfy those requirements?

Idea: go to faculty and students to get ideas for possible 3rd year courses. Maybe some of these can slot in for CIPS requirements?

In particular: specialized teamwork/project courses, maybe even earlier than 3rd year?

December 5, 2012

Confusion over contemplated changes to 1406

Need to figure out learning objectives for 1st year programming courses with goal of better prep for second year

Limitations of students coming in to 2nd year

• don't understand variables (name, type, location in mem), disaster for understanding pointers
• computer architecture - no knowledge of basics: CPU, RAM, devices
• stack (activation records) and heap
• they use recursion instead of while loops?! And for loops instead of while loops!
• file I/O
• basics of OO programming (what concepts?)