HoP Session Minutes (20/03/20) – Term 5/7 2020
Prior to the HoP session, HoP was provided with the consolidated feedback from students, collected by the ISTD Student Board.
Sections
New Faculty
- Matthieu De Mari (currently a Lecturer)
- Berrak Sisman (Speech, Spoken Language Processing) - just joined
Interviewing new Faculty
- Vision for Healthcare
- AI - Reinforcement Learning
- Hardware x 2 (Memory Management, Computer Engineering, Computational Structures Enhancement)
- Network on Chips (Expected to come this year)
- Lecturer for Data Mining module
New Modules
Term 6
Product Design Studio (2021)
- Extension of what you did in Term 2 (3.007)
- Hackathon-type challenge with a company
- Build end-to-end product solutions
Term 5/7
Service Design Studio (2022) (App Software design)
- Same as Product Design Studio but for end-to-end services
Advanced Algorithms & Discrete Structures (2022)
- Replaces Prob and Stats (moved to Term 3 in Freshmore)
- Is an elective (w.e.f. 2021, ISTD students start choosing 1 elective in Term 5 instead of 6)
Term 8
Mobile Robotics (2021) (Malika)
- Not really the hardware engineering side, but more on the “brain aspect”
- Use off-the-shelf provided hardware-interfaces for the “robots”
- Will be what Prof Malika applied in Canada
Information Retrieval (2021)
- Advanced data mining course
- Complements CDS (Computational Data Science, Term 6) which is an entry-level data mining course
Spoken Language Processing (2022) (Berrak)
- Speech recognition, etc
New Stuff
- I3 lab is almost ready. Once the server is set up and the computers arrive, then it can be opened to ISTD students for use for projects, etc
- Students entering SUTD in 2020 can start taking electives in Term 5 (instead of Term 6)
Issues raised
Software Engineering (SWE)
- Lack of focus track/modules for people interested in pursuing mods related to software engineering
- Software track as a “safety net” for people who aren’t execeptional at or particularly interested in the existing specialisations (ML, Cybersec, etc.)
- ESC could be modified to have a greater focus on SWE instead of the current style, then Design Studio could be an extension of ESC
Response
- Unfortunately, SWE is not a priority of ISTD. HoP is more concerned with how average ISTD students can turn out to be more marketable and competitive than graduates from other, larger, universities, hence the focus on equipping the average student with “lucrative” skills like AI instead of producing good software engineers
- UPDATED HoP Response: Seriously looking into designing a SWE track, students are welcome to give additional feedback
- Software vs hardware: priority on hardware (robotics, IOT) + other stuff like AI as it will make students more marketable. Focus is on specialising students from as early as possible
- HoP is thinking of a suitable track to park the Design Studio mods
Follow up
- Student Board will come back to HoP with several suggestions for a dedicated SWE track.
- Plans for design studio mods (collaboration with DAI) will be consulted with students again.
Intro to Prob and Stats
- Due to current Covid-19 situation, cancellation of lectures with no e-learning materials for Probs and Stats. Cannot follow textbook/MIT OCW
- Because cohort sessions are now covering the lectures as well, there is a lack of time to go through all the cohort exercises
- Seniors said that content spiked too fast at the end of the course for their year
Response
- Lecture slides prepared based on MIT’s, SUTD’s pace is apparently faster than MIT
- No constraints regarding elearning. Acknowledged that they should have started recording lectures earlier
- Possible to have recordings for lecture videos. Will have recordings for lectures and cohort classes will be focused entirely on the cohort exercises
- As of March 23, recorded lectures have been uploaded to eDimension
- Seniors’ feedback have been taken into account and the course should have been modified accordingly already
Computer System Engineering
- Lack of a clear detailed curriculum objective
- Need to know how students will be tested
Response
- Will need to find a compromise between practice and given objectives.
- May release extra practice qns and stuff.
Follow up
- Due to mid-term survey, prof removed her summary notes from eDimension so as to prevent students from being obliged to read and memorise all her notes. Her notes are still available on request
- Prof mentioned that the take-home quizzes will be longer so as to give us more practice
Network Security
- Feedback given on the Prof. HoP advised on the actions taken to address concerns.
Deep Learning
- The way the prof behaved, especially at the beginning, is quite aggressive/hostile
- Difficulty of the module is not an issue, but may scare some people off
- Course content itself is good and well-designed
Response
- This will be pointed out to the prof
Intro to Algorithms
- Profs cannot deliver content effectively. Feels like they’re just reading off the slides
- More in-class exercises/actual implementation of the algorithms
- Profs needs improvement in how they deliver their content as students prefer the teaching similar what they experienced in Digital World
- Suggested to use online judges such as HackerRank/LeetCode as practical homework
Response
- Will look into using online judges as homework
- Will try to integrate integrate a greater amount of actual practical practices