Department of Computer Science
STAFF STUDENT CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE       

Friday 25th November 2011
1.20 Malet Place Engineering Building

M I N U T E S

STAFF PRESENT:
Dr Graham Roberts (Departmental Tutor, DEOLO, Director of Studies, Chair) Jill Saunders (Departmental Manager), Nicola Alexander (Departmental Administrator, (Academic Policy and Operations), Neil Daeche, (Head of Internal Infrastructure), Patricia Fenoy (Departmental Office Administrator), JJ Giwa (Departmental Administrator, Facilities Management & Operations)
    
STUDENT ACADEMIC REPRESENTATIVES PRESENT:
Michael Boon (1st Year UG Rep), Markus Padourek (1st Year UG Rep), Shahriar Tajbakhsh (2nd Year UG Rep), Sam Gaus (2nd Year UG Rep), Ola Jacob Raji (3rd Year UG Rep), Lamiaa Chaabi, (3rd Year UG Rep), Antonio Garcia Paun (Graduate Student Rep), Ingolf Becker (MSc CS Rep), Saurabh Pareek (MSc FSE Rep), Shuai Yuan (International Student Rep), Pavlos Pavlopoulos (MSc SSE Rep), Majd Al Merey (MSc FSE Rep), Mathew Ettelaie (MSc ISec Rep), Diana Borsa (MSc ML Rep), Qingchen Wang (MSc ML Rep), Derek Ho (MSc FC Rep), Eric Yoon (MSc CS Rep)
   
IN ATTENDANCE:
Mr Chris Neil, Undergraduate Administrator, (Secretary)

1    APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE.  
The Chair welcomed the committee and noted that no apologies for absence were received.

2    NOTIFICATION OF ANY OTHER BUSINESS       
    Four issues were raised, (see item 15).  

3    UCL REGULATIONS FOR THE RUNNING OF SSCCS
The Chair noted the previously advertised link to the regulations for running Departmental Staff Student Consultative Committee meetings (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/academic-manual/part-7/sscc?) and asked those who had not read them yet to do so. 

4    APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING ON DECEMBER 6TH 2010
Two of the student reps who attended the last meeting signed that they were accurate, as did the Chair. 

5    MATTERS ARISING FROM THE MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING:
5.1    Late return of marked coursework for COMP3005. - The Chair reported that this issue was raised at the Departmental Teaching Committee Meetings and another lecturer was subsequently appointed to take over the coursework for this module in an effort to address the problem.

5.2    Modules without an active Moodle site. - The student reps identified two modules that they believe do not have a dedicated Moodle page yet:
•      COMPM028/GS10 - Language Based Security and
•        COMP3004 - Computational Complexity
It was also discussed that the Moodle page for COMP2003 does not hold much information or materials and COMPGC02 appears to have a separate page for each of the lecturers, which can be confusing to students. 

ACTION – Issue to be raised with Lecturers

5.3    Dead mouse in 1.05 - The Mouse has now been removed from the light-fitting by the Estates and Facilities Department and hopefully received a respectful burial somewhere off-campus.

5.4    Contribution to Open Source Projects - Engagement has been increased in this area and the department’s contribution continues through projects and group work. 

5.5    Notice about temperature control in 1.21 - It is believed that this has now been resolved but JJ agreed to check and confirm at the next meeting. 

ACTION – JJ to check if temperature issues have now been resolved.

5.6    Wider availability of Eduroam within the department – The Information Systems Department has agreed to extend the Eduroam Wi-Fi network to all rooms and floors in Malet Place Engineering Building.  However, they have not confirmed the date that this will happen yet.

5.7    Quiet room on 4th floor - JJ asked the reps to advertise this room more to other students as it is currently being under-utilised and there is a risk that students will lose the use of it is this continues.  In consultation with the reps, the space is currently being used by a research group for a short period. 

6    REPRESENTATIVE ON THE DEPARTMENTAL TEACHING CTTEE (Nicola Alexander)
The Chair reminded the committee that there are spaces available on the Departmental Teaching Committee and Faculty Committee meetings for Student Reps to attend and asked for volunteers to help represent student interests. 
Shahriar Tajbakhsh (2nd Year UG), volunteered to be the Teaching Committee Rep and Sam Gaus (2nd Year UG), the Faculty Rep. 

7    ANNUAL MONITORING OF MODULES AND PROGRAMMES (Graham Roberts)
The Chair summarised the Annual Monitoring process and reminded the Committee that the outcomes are made available on the web for students and others to see.  

8    NEW STUDENT COMMON ROOM (Graham Roberts)
The Computer Science Student Common Room has now been relocated to 66-72 Gower Street as planned.
The Chair asked the reps for feedback on the progress of the move.  The students requested computers to be installed in the new room and the previous pool table to be reinstated.  JJ reported that the previous pool table proved too expensive to repair and move, but that a replacement table is planned and that new computers are being investigated with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering with whom the new common room is shared. 

The Chair concluded that the extent of the improvement is dependent on the lease of 66-72 Gower Street and in the long term the UCL Master Plan aims to further improve student facilities such as this. 

9    ACCESS TO DRINKING WATER IN THE MPEB (Shahriar Tajbakhsh)
The Chair confirmed that access to drinking water in Malet Place Engineering Building is limited and mentioned that drinking fountains were planned to be included in the Roberts Building upgrade. 
The reps asked if drinking fountains could be installed in the toilets, but it was questioned if this was a sufficiently hygienic place to have a water fountain. 
JJ reported that a new water dispenser is soon to be installed on the 4th Floor, but that students would need to use their own cups/bottles. 


10    COMP2003 AND SECOND YEAR MODULES INVOLVING PROGRAMMING (Shahriar Tajbakhsh)
The Reps suggested that modules that involve programming have more interactive content so, for example, the results of changes made to the code can be seen during the lecture as in COMP2007. 
Other reps commented that the mathematics taught in COMP2003 is not as relevant to the Computer Science programme as it could be and that problem classes were only taught well when the lecturer led them.

ACTION – Reps to complete course feedback forms and issue to be raised at TCM.

11    MSC FINANCIAL COMPUTING (Derek Ho)
11.1    Module comments - Some Reps thought that the COMPGC02 android project was very difficult especially for students who had not programmed in this language before.  Other reps thought that students should be able to pick up new programming languages in a short time as this is what is often required in a real-life work environment. 
The reps also commented that the COMPGS02 coursework should be weighted more heavily as it was very time-consuming. 
The Chair responded that these issues are being looked into, but that to some extent further reading and time-consuming coursework should be expected by students. 

11.2    Voting process for MScFC rep - It was reported that the MSc FC students vote online to elect their student representative and that the students do not like the current arrangement as they can see who voted for whom.  The Chair responded that the voting should be anonymous and that if this is not followed, the student reps should inform the person who set up the voting system of the regulations. 
The Chair also noted that the 1st year UG reps had been elected already, with UG reps from other years due to be elected in February including 4th year UG reps of which no-one has yet put their name forward. 

11.3    Printing service in the computer lab – The Student Reps asked for cover sheets not to be automatically included on print-outs.  Neil responded that this can be turned of on all Linux machines.  Other reps noted that they find the cover sheets useful. 
It was agreed to trial removing the cover sheets in one student lab to see if this leads to any problems with work being collected by the wrong person etc.

ACTION – Neil to disable cover sheets in one of the labs for trial period. 

11.4    Password locking of lab machines – The Reps reported that the door-lock codes for the two interconnected 1st floor labs no longer have the same code. 

ACTION – JJ to investigate this. 

12    OPENING HOURS (Lamiaa Chaabi)
The Reps asked if the current departmental opening hours, (8am to 7pm), could be extended.  The Chair responded that this issue has come up many times, but unfortunately there is no scope to be able to lengthen these at the current time for both health & safety and security reasons.  He added that the department does support this and encouraged the reps to continue to raise this issue as there may be scope for the Faculty to extend opening hours in the future. 

13    FEEDBACK FORMS FOR TUTORIALS (Lamiaa Chaabi)
The Reps requested the ability to provide feedback on the problem classes for their modules separately from the rest of the module. 
Nicola reported that this has been incorporated into the new feedback process being developed by Brad Karp and will be introduced shortly. 

14    COMPGI01 SUPERVISED LEARNING (Mischa Schirris)
14.1    Include exercises and solutions
The Reps noted that it is difficult to know if programming assignments are correct without having access to the solutions. 
The Chair recommended that they speak with the lecturer directly regarding this matter. 

14.2    Update syllabus to show assessment correctly
The Student Reps pointed out that the syllabus pages appear to indicate that there is only one coursework component for this module, but in-fact there are multiple courseworks.  Nicola agreed to update the page accordingly.

ACTION – Nicola to update Syllabus pages.

15    ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Industrial Action – Jill noted that there is industrial action planned for 30th November 2011.  UCL, in general, doesn’t plan to close, but some lectures and services may be affected as a result.  The department aims to notify students of any cancelled lectures etc. via Moodle and the Web.  If anyone has any questions regarding this, please let Jill know. 

3rd Year time constraints on Projects  - The Reps also commented that the time constraints placed on 3rd Year BSc students were causing problems and this was mainly due to having to do the group project and individual project in the same year, (as opposed to in different years as on the MEng programme).   The Chair responded that he was aware of this issue and this is being addressed as part of the undergraduate restructuring with the expected outcome being to move the group project to the second year instead. 

CS Student Shop – Chris asked the Student Reps if any of them would be interested in volunteering to help take the CS Student Shop and Design Competition forward for 2011-12.  Michael Boon (1st Year UG Rep), and Markus Padourek (1st Year UG Rep), volunteered. 

Extending Term 2 Mentor Arrangements – Ola Raji asked if there was sufficient departmental funds to be able to pay Student Mentors in term 2 as was done last year. 
The Chair responded that the department fully supports this scheme and so long as the funds can be found the department will extend the support for 2011/12. 

ACTION – Graham to request funding extension

16    THE NEXT MEETING IS DUE TO BE HELD IN LATE FEBRUARY 2012.



CHRIS NEIL                                
Undergraduate Administrator
Department of Computer Science
[020 7679 3690, UCL extension 33690, email: c.neil@cs.ucl.ac.uk]