Student Staff Meeting 2 semester 1 2016

11 May in H7.84

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Nandita Bhattacharjee, Janet Fraser, Chris Gonsalvez, Maria Indrawan-Santiago, Rob Meredith, Michael Morgan, Steven Wright,

Christina Branton

Amit Batra, Nan Gao, Prayank Kashyap, Shan Li,Harsheel Prakash Shetty, Dimaz Wijaya,

It was requested by some of the students that Chris Gonsalvez attend the meeting as students would like to discuss the IBL.

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Chris suggested that it would be valuable to know how many students raised an issue rather than it being a personal view. Feedback needs to be representative of the students.

FIT3094 Artificial life, artificial intelligence and virtual environments?

  • Students felt that they were not encouraged to ask questions
  • The head tutor is responsive to questions on moodle
  • The attendance rate is rising slightly at lectures

FIT5046 Mobile and distributed computing systems

  • There are 6 or 7 tutorials and that is all
  • The tutor doesn’t say much during the tutorial
  • Until week 6 or 7 it is really busy, weeks 9-12 don’t need to attend. Students have to form groups of 4 and read/write assignment

MM will contact the lecturer and do some investigation. He asked if it was the tutor or the way the unit is structured.

FIT5148 Distributed and big data processing

  • Pari is a good lecturer, patient, she speaks slowly and clearly.
  • Pari is very clear on the recordings
  • Students are doing the pre-readings and finding it helpful
  • Students understand the content rather than memorising.

FIT5047 Intelligent systems

  • The content is complex but Ingrid is a good teacher. Students need to do their own work.
  • Tutorial: Najam. There is an interview for lab assessment. The tutor will keep asking questions to ascertain if the student knows the work, this annoys the students.

FIT4039 Android and iOS development

  • Personal: Students learn by themselves rather than in the lecture. Students think that the lecturer/tutor doesn’t play an important role
  • The lecturer talks very quickly
  • Tutor is patient
  • The lecturer provides very little material
  • Heavy workload

CG explained that often students don’t realise that there is 12 hours per week of study required for each unit and that it may be heavier at assignment time.

Students enquired about IBL for postgraduates

CG explained

  • that industry won’t accept international students
  • It is hard to fit the IBL program into a 2 year course
  • IE has been introduced as a way to meet the need
  • The IBL experience can be very varied. FIT can’t standardise their experience.
  • The IEis carefully considered. It is a reflexive practice, entrepreneurial start to implementation in 12 weeks
  • Students have to think for themselves, manage opinions, choose pathway and deliver something
  • It wasn’t possible to find the placements
  • It wasn’t possible to extend the degree
  • Equity b/w international and domestic student experience

Internships: Students would like internships

CG explained that unless it is core to the degree then it doesn’t meet international visa requirements

The Faculty is setting up an IT careers day which will include session for employers about taking international students

FIT5143 IT research methods

  • Complaint. It would be better to take the unit before the minor thesis
  • Take this unit IT research methods before doing any research

Future: unit will go online and be compressed, the unit is being redeveloped

Lab Access

Some of the Caulfield students live at Clayton. They would like to be able to study at Clayton campus rather than travelling to Caulfield to access study spaces but were finding access at Clayton labs to be problematic.

FIT5124 Advanced topics in security

  • One person reported that the material is good but hard to follow. A query was raised about prerequisite maths
  • There is a timetabling issue regarding availability of the unit/semester
  • IE and this unit are both hectic.

CG – 48 hours a week should be allocated to study. This seems to surprise students. Maths assistance is available within the university

Digital Forensic – the students would like this to be offered as a unit.

ACS membership for students – could the faculty assist?

MM – will raise it at a higher level.

FIT5034 Quality of service and network management

There was a mistake in calculating the final mark, this has been corrected.

MM told the meeting he went through the marking process

He believes he signed off on a couple of mark changes

Process to minimise errors

Amendment of grade form

We do best by having a process – remission of debt process, review of results process, board of examiners.

NB – all failed papers are checked

MM

errors are documented and followed up

Please ask the failed students to contact Michael

Trudi Robinson should have contacted each student affected

Group assignment

  • Group members received different marks
  • Student didn’t want to interrupt his friend so didn’t ‘answer’ as much

MM – did the student talk to the lecturer?

Yes

MM there is a grievance process, please contact MM

Funding for student travel

  • Is research funding granted to students for conference travel?

MM – if the student has co-authored with an academic then there is funding

Orientation

  • Could industry come in and talk about units that are useful?

CG - all our units are valid for industry. We wouldn’t teach a unit that wasn’t

MM – The faculty gets industry input when designing courses

FIT5094 IT for management decision making

  • Assignment – the students were only given two weeks to do an assignment
  • Had to come in to the University to use the software
  • There are only a limited number of licences – 64

MM will contact the lecturer

Time management

Is there a specific workshop? Campus Connect/Campus Community Division has historically had Time management workshops.