Curriculum Committee ("CC") Minutes for 10 January 1996

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Attending:  Fleming, Fujimura, Goyal, Kerr, Mamrak, Michaylov, Ogden, Quinlan,
            Supowit, Weide, Woodruff, Yeack

* Discussion of proposed CIS 200 ("new 211")
    
  Elley and Chris presented a revised syllabus in response to questions
  from the Nov 21, 1995 meeting.  There was unanimous agreement in principle
  that we should go ahead with the change, but that we should continue
  the pilots as 294J at least through summer.
  
  CC agreed that Elley, Chris, Bill, and Bruce will get together to
  wordsmith the syllabus a bit more to take into account concerns about
  possible misleading (over-ambitious or too-ambiguous) course objectives.
  Elley and Chris will come back to CC with a proposal at a future meeting
  this quarter, at which time we will vote on a recommendation to the faculty.
  
  CC discussed several issues regarding the 200 proposal:
    - The pilots have been evolving, but even this quarter we don't
      have a realistic pilot.  Last quarter the students were all honors
      students.  Their feedback about 294J suggested it went very well,
      but they are not typical students.  Furthermore, all classes were
      conducted in DL 280 where students had computers in front of them
      every day.  This is impractical for CIS 200 because there will
      be too many sections.  This quarter, the 294J students are regular
      students and they are meeting in DL 280 only once a week, which is
      more realistic.  But the math prerequisite (Math 075) is lower than is
      proposed for 200, and the equipment is still HP/WABI and not the
      Windows NT environment that is proposed for 200.  Spring quarter
      we have changed the 294J prerequisite to the proposed 200 prerequisite
      (Math 116, Math 130, or Math 148), but the equipment still might
      not be in place.  So summer might be the first realistic pilot.
    - The summer and fall schedules are due out very soon, so given the
      above situation CC decided to spend a little more time making a 
      recommendation to the faculty.  We will put up 294J in summer and
      fall schedules, and the registrar has offered to put a note in the
      schedule to direct students looking for CIS 211 and who are in
      Business to take 294J, and students who are looking for introductory
      Pascal programming to take CIS 201.  This should help keep us from
      losing students who don't know what to take.  Cheryl will make sure
      this suggestion is followed.
    - The concentration on spreadsheet problems is fine, but it should be
      clear in the course objectives -- AND to the students in the
      course -- that the limited attention to databases leaves them with
      working knowledge of how to approach data extraction problems for
      small databases, and not much else.  It also was suggested that there
      should be an exercise in the course to extract database information
      and put it into a spreadsheet, which is not currently covered but
      which is a typical business-oriented problem.

  
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Next meeting: 17 January 1996, 3:30 PM, in DL 698.


Respectfully submitted,

	Bruce W. Weide, CC Chair