Issue: Complete review of assessment data on undergraduate program,
including recent student exit surveys and report of spring meeting with student
advisory panel.
Resolutions: Approved unanimously the following.
- Frequency of SMALC data gathering can be reduced to once per course per year,
rather than every course offering.
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- Analysis of ABET assessment data can be done on a 3-year rotating basis. Best
way to divide the work (e.g., by outcomes or by sources of data) is to be worked out
by the UGCC and DUGS.
- We UGCC and the instructors of the introductory programming
courses will study further whether we should allow students who
take our introductory Java course for non-majors to count that
course as satisyfing their second programming language
requirement, if they subsequently decide to major in CS. (This
would not replace a CS elective, but just remove the requirement
that one of the electives be in a second programming language.)
- The instructors of the courses COP 3014, COP 3330, COP 4530,
and COP 4531 should study how they can improve the coordination
between the four courses in our 4-semester sequence in
programming, algorithms, and data structures, to reduce both
duplication and gaps caused by differences between instructor in
what it taught, below the level of detail of the course syllabi. A
first step will be to ask the instructors to create a list of the
specific data structures and algorithms they cover, and another
list of those they expect students will have learned in prior
courses. We will share these, and look for overlaps and gaps. We
may do the same for C++ programming language features, among the
first three courses in that sequence.
- The department chair will take over the responsibility of
holding a regular meeting with CS majors, every fall term, to
collect feedback on student views of the program. At that
meeting, we will ask students electives they most want to see
offered the following year, as well as to comment on other matters
of concern. Of course, we cannot promise to offer the exact
courses they request since it will depend on our faculty's
expertise, other courses to be offered, and whether or not the
faculty feel a requested elective is appropriate.