Department of Computing ~ Macquarie University
100 level liaison committee meeting
30th March 2015, 1PM
Student Representatives
Unit
Casey Buttsworth
ISYS100
Daniel Cecere
ISYS100
Nathaniel Cala
ISYS100
Alana Gibson
COMP125
Alex Dary
ISYS100
Madeleine Tout
COMP125
Stephen Robinson
ISYS100
Sachin Sohal
ISYS100
William Wu
ISYS100
Staff Representatives
Units
Matt Pigram
COMP125
Matt Roberts
COMP115
Tony Sloane
COMP115
Pongsak Suvanpong
Minute Taker
Christophe Doche
Head of Department of Computing
Melina Chan
Executive Officer
Scott McCallum
COMP125
Matthew Mansour
ISYS100/104
Frances Louise
ISYS100/104
Natalia Salzberg
Faculty IT
Mike Johnson
Chair
COMP125 - Fundamentals of Computer Science
Scott McCallum
• The lecture was good.
• The lecture hall was too small and uncomfortable, when all students turned up to sit for the class
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exam.
Scott responded that he had tried to book an overflow room at the beginning of the session but
his request was denied.
In the next class exam, he would try to make a new arrangement.
There would be two more class exams in the unit.
Student suggested to book another room which was bigger, just for the test.
Students were concerned about tutors only stayed for 1.5hr instead of full 2hrs in the workshop.
Students felt that there was not enough time for the tutor to explain everything.
Matt Pigram responded that he normally would stay to the 2 full hrs if students still had questions
for him.
Scott responded that due to the budget constraint, tutors were allocated for 1.5 hrs, instead of
2hrs as timetabled and there were more student enrolled than expected.
Student responded on Assignment 1 that they liked that Scott provided helpful extra tutorial
classes just for students who had difficulties in getting started.
SR also provided positive feedback for Gaurav that they liked the in-class practices in the lecture
and he had lots of good stuff in the lecture.
ISYS100 - Information Technology and Society
Matthew Mansour
• Student responded that the assignment was not in depth into the technical contents, for example
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HTML. But the unit provided another angle on the social side.
HTML assignment mark allocation was not high.
Matt responded that he raised the mark to 8% from 5% in previous sessions based on feedback
in liaison meetings.
Students liked Matt’s lecture, the contents were explained well in the lecture. Student reps
remarked that Matt was a very good lecturer, very engaging, even though materials could be
read on the textbook, it was good for the lecturer to explain face-to-face and students could
understand the concept very quickly.
SR felt this was a very good planet unit, taught basic ideas but very useful.
Student asked if the content of linda.com could be used with ISYS100, it would be
complementary to the unit.
COMP115 - Introduction to Computer Science
Matthew Roberts
• There was no student representative in the meeting.
• Matt responded that he had announced about the meeting in iLearn forum. He would try to let
students know about the meeting next time.
• One SR’s brother was doing COMP115, had sent the comments that the contents were too easy
at the beginning.
• Tony responded that he had talked to the students who had difficulties with week 2 contents.
• Matt responded that the contents normally would get more difficult toward the middle of the unit.
And the module exams were used to get student to identify their problems area.
• C. Doche responded that the contents of COMP115 were designed to be solid background for
COMP125.
ISYS104 - Introduction to business information system
Manolya Kavakli
• There was no student representative in the meeting.
• Frances had some responses from students that the 1st assignment was confusing so she had
reworked the assignment with Manolya. The reason for the confusion was that Manolya was
trying to make sure that students would not be able to copy from other students.
• Students were doing ok, they worked in groups.
General Issues
• iLearn was sending too many messages to students.
• C. Doche would raise the issue with iLearn.
• WiFi dropped out very often. Natalia suggested that when the problem occurred, the university
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IT should be contacted, so that the problem was known to the IT.
Student: Every year, dream spark account needed to be reapplied which is inconvenient.
Student suggested that when printing, the system should default to print duplex to save paper.
C. Doche: printing quota was accumulated, suggested it to be capped.
Students: most of the printing was required towards the end of semester, because of report
printing.
The meeting concluded at 2pm.