University College London

Computer Science Department

Minutes of the SSCC meeting held on January 29th 2003 in the Chadwick Lecture Theatre at 1.00pm

Student Representative Present: Mark Delacour(4^th yr rep),  Sunil Sharda (2^nd yr rep), Andy Chung (3^rd yr rep), Simon Yu (3^rd yr rep) Sam Cheung (MSc IT rep) Kerry McCrensky (MSc CS rep)  Nathan Lea (MSc CS rep) , Peter Sinden (MSc IS rep), Melissa Ho (MSc DCNDS rep), Ricky Kotecha (MACS, CSwMaths rep), Kip Yip Wong (MRes CVIPGS rep), Martin Sewell (PhD rep)

Staff Representatives Present: Robin Hirsch - Chair  (Departmental Undergraduate Tutor),

Jill Saunders, Sarah Berke - Secretary (Departmental Managers), Stephen Hailes (Programme Director, MSc DCNDS and Director of Teaching Studies) JJ Giwa (Senior Departmental Officer), Barry Stein (Technical Support Group), Bernard Buxton (Programme Director, MRes CVIPGS), Peter Rounce, Janet McDonnell (Programme Director designate MSc CS)

1.                    Chair’s Announcement – Chairing of Meeting

The Chair informed the meeting that he had invited students to Chair the meeting but this invitation had not been taken up.

He informed the meeting that there was one more scheduled meeting in this academic year the date of which had to be decided.  If a student representative wished to chair the panel then they should approach Robin.

2.                    Apologies for Absence

None

3. Notification of any other business

There were two items of further business.

3.1           Mark Delacour wished to raise problems surrounding the Evolutionary Systems course

3.2           Nathan Lea wished to raise problems with the on line helpdesk

4.                Approval of minutes of the meeting of 13th November 2002

The minutes of the meeting held on 13^th November 2002 were approved

5.        Matters arising.

5.1           Minute 11 – It was noted that the student common room had been wired up with two network connections but they were not currently working.  Kerry said she had informed the helpdesk

5.2                Minute13              Sarah informed the meeting that Mark had asked before Christmas if some timetable clashes for 4^th year students could be resolved.  She had been able to resolve these clashes, but it later transpired that in doing so problems had been created for the DCNDS students who now had 6 hours lectures in a row on Fridays.

( ref minute 16 of this meeting)

5.3           Minute 10 – Bulletin Board – It was reported that this was working well.

5.4           Minute 16 – Not raised but noted by secretary.  The options for First and Second year students were currently being examined with a view to removing the programme option requirement and increasing the number of options available to students.

6.        "Lack of clear and up to date information about the MScCS exam rubric [K McCrensky, MSc CS]

Kerry told the meeting that they had some concerns about the information on the web page

6.1           Firstly the exam paper links were either not present or not working.

Jill informed the meeting that the library had a new web page were previous exam papers from last year had been scanned.  She said she would circulate the URL

Action:  JFS

6.2     There was no clear way of understanding which exam papers in the core courses (DOA, DOB, DOC) corresponded to the paper courses(D0a1, D0a2, D0b1 etc)

In addition it was not clear how the coursework percentages on the paper courses corresponded to the coursework percentages prescribed in the exam papers.

Nathan informed the meeting that Chris Clack was currently on holiday but had said he would supply this information on his return.

Secretary’s note: Subsequent to the meeting                 Peter Rounce emailed students describing how the paper courses corresponded to the exam papers.

6.3     Some of the links to the basic course list were not working or the syllabi were out of date

JFS advised that this was the responsibility of the Programme Director

Action:  CDC

7.        Late night access to labs. Prof Treleaven has offered £500 to help with this. Which day, other than Thursday, would late night access be most appreciated? [J Giwa]

JJ advised that Professor Treleaven had agreed to supply £500 from the MSc Intelligent Systems budget in order to offer some extra late night access.  This was subject to sufficient designated persons being available to staff the days requested.

The MSc Intelligent Systems rep requested that as Philip Treleaven had given this money from the MSc IS budget the extra day be on a Tuesday.  This was a day when courses were taught for the programme.  Other members present agreed with this.  JJ therefore agreed to see if she could get designated people to staff Tuesday as an additional late night lab night.

Action JJ

Sarah circulated figures showing the usage in term 1 of the late night access

8.        Request for a water cooler in student common room or a water fountain [M Das, ug year 2]

Sunil Sharma spoke on behalf of Minati.  He was the other 2^nd year rep.

JJ pointed out that this had been investigated before.  A water cooler could not be installed as the water company had already identified a difficulty in getting the water to room 306 – the student common room.   A water fountain was also problematic because of the number of waste pipes around that area

Sarah pointed out that there was a cost in installing a water fountain.  We were due to move into a new building in 20 months time.

JJ said that there was drinking water located in the toilets adjacent to the student common room.

We would look at providing drinking water in the common room in the new building.

Action:  SAB

9.        Request for wireless network access points in labs [M Das]

Barry pointed out there was a cost involved in setting up wireless networks.  In addition the service provided for staff for security reasons could not overlap with any student service that might be set up.

It was agreed to take this item to Services Committee for further discussion.

Action:  RH – to take to Services Committee

10.     Request for a replacement windows manager. Instead of TWM could we have OLWM or perhaps KDE or GNOME? For linux maybe fluxbox or blackbox. [M Das]

Barry admitted TWM was old but it did have transparency and was available over all platforms.    The TSG had been looking at providing FDWM – which did have more modern features. However a bug had been discovered.

TSG were continuing to look at other options but students needed to realise that there were support implications for a replacement windows manager

11.     Default display bit depth on Solaris machines should be 24-bit. This is pretty much required for the graphics courses [M Das]

Barry said that during the summer TSG had been looking at 24-bit capability.  However not all software worked on 24 bit mode.

The graphics course concerned was Anthony Steed’s 3C72.  Some lecturers present thought that it was not essential to have 24 bit graphics for 3C72.  Alternatively if it was desired it was present in lab B24.

SAB agreed to talk to Anthony to see if it was a must have for his course

Action: Sarah

12.     With TogetherJ being so slow, is there any chance something like Eclipse with Omondo UML could be considered? [M Das]

TogetherJ was required for the Software Engineering course 2B15 – taught by Cecillia Mascolo.  Barry told the meeting that the software had been chosen by the SE lecturers. 

It was agreed that the lecturers should be informed about the problems.

Robin agreed to raise the problems with Services Committee and Sarah agreed to talk to Cecillia

Action:  RH and SAB

13.     Request to replace netscape4. How about Mozilla? [M Das]

It was noted that Mozilla used more resources than netscape – appox 40mb when  idle.  An additional problem was that Mozilla does not work well under FDWM.

If there were specific requirements for plug-ins the TSG would look at putting them in.  However Barry advised that a lot of websites were now designed to work properly with Internet Explorer.

14.     Can the lecture times be improved to avoid long gaps? [M Das]

Sarah explained that it was difficult to timetable to avoid long gaps especially if courses were taught to different programmes of study.   Due to the change in all the postgraduate programmes and the 3^rd and 4^th year undergraduate programmes major changes were required to the timetable next year.

If information could be provided now of where the problems were Sarah would look to see if anything could be done about improving the situation next year.  However the primary aim in timetabling any courses was to optimise the number of options students could take and this would continue to take precedence over anything else.

Action:  Students to inform Sarah of problems asap

15.     Student representation in the new departmental committee structure [S Berke]

Sarah circulated a paper showing the new Departmental committee structure.  The Committee structure was being phased in over the next 6 months. 

 The Operations and Premises Committee was having its first meeting next week and a representative from the research student population and the taught student population were required for that committee.  She asked the reps present if they or any of their peers would be interested in sitting on this committee.  Anyone interested was asked to contact Sarah asap.  Student representation for the other committees would be sought as soon as they were active.

Action:  Students to contact Sarah if interested in being on Operations and Premises Committee

16.     DCNDS class rescheduling was a mess this year. Can this be avoided next year? [M Ho, DCNDS]

The DCNDS students had some changes to their timetable, which resulted in 6 hours of classes on Fridays. Sarah informed the meeting that this was as a result of changes made at the request of the  4^th year undergraduates who had timetable clashes.  It was unfortunate and we would try to avoid the same situation occurring next year but as always the primary concern was to maximise number of options for students.

In addition some of the students had been unaware of a change to a venue for one of the courses as we normally email the course (eg Z15) and DCNDS students do not subscribe to their course mailing lists.

17.     Lecture disruption. Low level muttering and talking during lectures needs to be stopped. Lecturers should see this through [N Lea, MSc CS]

There was a lengthy discussion on this issue.  Students were told by the academics present that they should feel free to tell their peers to be quiet during lecturers. 

Robin agreed to bring this item up in Teaching Committee.

Students were encouraged to keep reporting back about these problems.  A possible code of conduct for lecturers might be invoked.

Secretary’s note:  Subsequent to meeting Steve Hailes has agreed a procedure amongst CS academics which will be discussed by TCM

18.     Drabness of front foyer: Can we have something on display there, maybe from the slade? It is hardly the most inspiring of atria. [N Lea]

The Slade Foyer was used primarily as an overflow exhibition area.  Most exhibits were present during the summer. Nathan told the meeting that Anthony Finkelstein had written to the head of the Slade School asking if the foyer could be used more frequently.

19.     Poor state of wires in 229/ projector often difficult to get working [N Lea]

The wires in 229 now seemed to be in a tidy condition.   Students and staff were encouraged to email the helpdesk at request if further problems were encountered.

20.     General Comments regarding D0a4 [N Lea]

Notes for this course had been available late in the term.  The lecturer had not finished teaching the entire course.

21.     Central college bodies (Such as the friends programme's committee and others) sometimes send emails to the department (at least they explicitly told me they do) providing information about scholarships, bursaries etc. They ask the departments to forward that info to the students who might need it via tutors or in any other way. In 3 years at the CS dept, no such information was EVER forwarded to me or anybody else I know unless explicitly requested [G Paperin, ug year 3]

Normally scholarships and bursaries, whether for merit or hardship, cannot be applied for directly by the student. They have to be recommended by a member of academic staff.

When notices about scholarships or bursaries come round the departmental tutor emails all tutors to ask for nominations.

Robin recognised that in some cases tutors may not be aware of a student’s hardships.  He therefore agreed to contact the Friends room to see if they felt it would be permissible to advertise bursaries for students direct to the student population rather than indirectly through tutors.

22.     Request for IMAP protocol for dept. mailing system [G Paperin]

This had been requested in addition to POP3 as students wanted copies of all emails on their laptops or computers at home.

Barry informed the meeting that a review of email was currently taking place but would take some time

23.     Any other business

23.1              Evolutionary Systems (M.Delacour)

Mark informed the meeting that the undergraduate students weren’t aware of the need to use Matlab when undertaking the course.  The syllabus did not reflect the need to be conversant with Matlab.

It was agreed that Mark Herbster the course tutor should be asked to ensure that the undergraduate syllabus reflected the need for Matlab knowledge.

23.2              Online Helpdesk (K. McCrensky)

There is an area on the TSG website for online unix help that constantly says under construction.

Sarah agreed to raise this with Melita Rowley – the TSG administrator

24.     Date of next meeting

It was agreed that the next meeting should be at the end of February