Hi All,
Thank you for your many questions.
I asked the Director your questions and provided a summary of responses below.
Bold are the questions.
non-bold are a summary of the response/discussion had.
Indented sections are my comments on them.
As many of you know the remote course offering list can be found here. https://www.sfu.ca/students/support/classes-2021/remote-classes-fall.html
Some notes about Covid-19 and on campus learning.
- Ventilation is being inspected and improved as well as additional filtration systems
- Bulk of courses are in person
- Instructors are being recommended to record lecture slides/voice and host online. In most cases this won't be a room recording as some lectures previously had, but likely a screen capture and audio recording. For in person classes, exams are going to be in person, so being close to SFU is important.
"CMPT courses have awarded the lowest average grades in SFU over the last 10 years, as well the lowest average grades for 2019/2020 (both lower and upper division courses). Are there any plans to deal with this at all, in regards to scholarship acquisition, grad school applications, and how our transcripts look to employers?"
Computing Science Courses are around the average grade given by SFU for the over the past 3 years (time frame they looked into this for).
He showed me the differences and it was exceptionally close to the SFU average for the past 3 years, within a few hundredths of a grade point.
"When is ASB construction set to end"
Scheduled to be done around the end of the Fall term.
"Can there be more evening classes?"
Evening classes are not offered often, they need to work with the instructors schedule. They also can make the course less accessible to people taking early courses causing large gap between their classes.
"Do concentrations still exist within Computing Science"
Yes they do.
http://www.sfu.ca/students/calendar/2021/fall/programs/computing-science/major/bachelor-of-science-or-bachelor-of-arts.html (Look near the bottom of the page)
"Taking courses CMPT courses abroad is difficult in terms of transferring of credits."
If not all the same topics are taught in a course at SFU it is possible that the course will not transfer over. There are lots of Universities and their courses change, so it's not practical to have a list of all Universities and which courses can be transferred.
"Will CMPT 318 (Cyber Security) be turned into a regular course"
Yes, it will be turned into a regular courses with a unique course number.
"Are there plans to be more Cyber Security courses in the future?"
Yes, there are plans to have more Cyber Security courses in the near future.
"Can CMPT 376w be made more technical"
Apparently the course is in a bit of a shift due to the addition of CMPT 105w some of the material now covered in CMPT 376w will be taught in CMPT 105w leaving CMPT 376w to see coverage change.
"What is happening with the removal of CMPT 127"
CMPT 127 is being combined with CMPT 125.
"Why do some upper division courses in the AI column not have CMPT 310 as a per-requisite?"
The school does not like making unnecessary per-requisites to courses as they can act as "gate-keepers".
"Will Cryptocurrency/Blockchain be added to coverage of courses"
They are important technologies and they likely will have components taught in future.
When exactly courses covering these technologies will be taught, it's not yet know.
We will do this again in the Fall.
Thanks,
Mitchell Gale
Computing Science Student Society President
