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

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?!