Login

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

March 29, 2024, 08:22:42 am

Author Topic: UNSW Course Reviews  (Read 288512 times)  Share 

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

katie,rinos

  • Honorary Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *******
  • Posts: 1081
  • Respect: +1151
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #195 on: August 12, 2020, 11:34:38 am »
+8
Subject Code/Name: EDST4080-Special Education: Inclusive Strategies

Contact Hours:  2hr lecture, 1hr tute (sometimes 1hr of lecture or tute was replaced by online activities/questions)

Assumed Knowledge: Must have completed EDST2002, and enrolled in an education degree.

Assessment:  Evidence-based practise guide (45%), Information booklet for High School Teachers (55%).

Lecture Recordings?  Yes

Notes/Materials Available:  Some additional readings/videos.

Textbook: Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement-Marvyn Hyde, Lorelai Carpenter, and Shelley Dole. Is available as an ebook through the library.  It’s used for readings but I didn’t use the textbook a lot.

Lecturer(s): Iva Strnadová (and guest lecturers some weeks).

Year & Trimester of completion: 2020/2

Difficulty: 4/5

Overall Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 77 D

Comments:
I found this course pretty interesting! Each week we’d look at type of disability (autism, intellectual disability, communication disorder, hearing/vision loss, etc.) and how we could effectively cater for it in our classrooms. We had several guest lecturers throughout the term such as speech pathologists and principals to give their perspectives and information on issues.

I found that this was one of my least personal classes. With the online format, almost nobody had their cameras on for the whole term and most breakout group I was in were really awkward.

I found the assignments a little frustrating. They weren’t based on the lecture content and were almost entirely different. The first was a 3000 word evidence-based practise guide where you needed to choose an area (such as social skills) to focus on. The 2nd assessment was an information booklet for high school teachers on either inclusive education or the universal design for learning. I chose the inclusive education option and a lot of it was on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students or family/community partnerships which we hardly addressed in class. The booklet had limited guidelines and we were told that it had to be minimum 3000 words but a good one would go over. Mine was 18 pages (including the title, contents page, definition of inclusive ed, strategies for inclusion/establishing partnerships, useful teacher resources and references) and took a huge amount of time, considering I had assessments for other subjects too!! However, Iva was helpful in answering questions both in class and during her consultation hours and showing examples of past student work.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2020, 12:07:23 pm by blasonduo »
Class of 2017 (Year 12): Advanced English, General Maths, Legal Studies, Music 1, Ancient History, History Extension, Hospitality
2018-2022: B Music/B Education (Secondary) [UNSW]

fun_jirachi

  • MOTM: AUG 18
  • HSC Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1068
  • All doom and Gloom.
  • Respect: +710
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #196 on: August 25, 2020, 02:09:47 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: MATH1081 - Discrete Mathematics

Contact Hours:
2 x 2 hour lectures, 1x 1 hour lectures, 2 x 1 hour tutorials

Assumed Knowledge:
The level of competence in Mathematics/Mathematics Extension 1 quoted from above link 'Students will be expected to have achieved a combined mark of at least 100 in Mathematics and Mathematics Extension 1'

Assessment:
2 x Lab Tests - 30% - (15% each)
10 x Weekly Online Tutorials - 10% - (1% each)
1 x Assignment - 10%
Final Exam - 50%

Lecture Recordings?
Available online post-lecture on medium of choice (this term blackboard collaborate)

Notes/Materials Available:
Course pack and notes + tutorial questions, available in store/online

Textbook:
Used course pack notes as well as lecture notes

Lecturer(s):
David Angell

Year & Trimester of completion:
2020 T2

Difficulty:
2/5

Overall Rating:
4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:
90 HD

Comments:
Loved this course. Only a 4.5/5 because no course is perfect, especially online (also given that i don't really know what a perfect course is right now given my inexperience) - but it does its best by setting clear goals each week to complete and stepping through content clearly. Only dodgy part was probably the online testing media (maple and numbas go brrrr). Also, brilliant lecturer ;D, could listen all day and wasn't just a quality lecturer but also a quality person - it is quite literally impossible to get lost doing this course even if you're not too confident in your maths if you have David. The course content was interesting, and while doing enrichment courses in high school or outside of school may introduce you to some of these ideas, they're rather abstract and great to follow given there's no first-year course that tackles this content. As long as you don't have pretentious people who already know a lot of this stuff (ie. ideas from computing, pre-learning, learnt before in high school etc.) busting down tutors or technology blowing up in your face, 100% enjoyment guaranteed :)
« Last Edit: September 02, 2020, 11:04:08 pm by fun_jirachi »
Spoiler
HSC 2018: Mod Hist [88] | 2U Maths [98]
HSC 2019: Physics [92] | Chemistry [93] | English Adv [87] | 3U Maths [98] | 4U Maths [97]
ATAR: 99.05

UCAT: 3310 - VR [740] | DM [890] | QR [880] | AR [800]
Guide Links:
Subject Acceleration (2018)
UCAT Question Compilation/FAQ (2020)
Asking good questions

fun_jirachi

  • MOTM: AUG 18
  • HSC Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1068
  • All doom and Gloom.
  • Respect: +710
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #197 on: August 26, 2020, 12:04:04 am »
+8
Subject Code/Name: COMP1521 - Computer Systems Fundamentals

Contact Hours:
2 x 2 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial, 1 x 2 hour lab

Assumed Knowledge:
Prerequisites are either having done COMP1511 or COMP1911 or DPST1091 or COMP1917 - taken from link above
also below, stolen from course website for 20T2
- write simple programs in the C programming language
- define and invoke functions and return results in C
- define and manipulate structured data in C
- use pointers to access data objects
'These are assumed to have been acquired in COMP1511 or COMP1911.'

Assessment:
2 x Assignment - 30%
8 x Weekly Tests - 10% (taking best 6 of 8 marks, each worth 1.7)
9 x Lab Questions - 15% (can get more than 15% but total is capped at 15%)
Final Exam - 45%

Lecture Recordings:
Yes - streamed on teams/private youtube

Notes/Materials Available:
Cheatsheets + references, lecture slides and lecture code and more all available on course website for the term

Textbook:
No

Lecturer(s):
Andrew Taylor

Year & Trimester of completion:
2020 T2

Difficulty:
3/5

Overall Rating:
4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:
91 HD

Comments:
Really interesting course! Well-structured as well; given the prerequisites to do this course, it's actually quite easy to follow along and a lot of the stuff earlier in the term has some relevance later in the term which is really cool to see (makes you see the applications of everything you learn, even if some other applications weren't explored in depth). Cool topics (bar probably assembly code - improves logic, and was very fun but clunky and annoying to write up) and provided small intros to other comp courses later in uni (comp1511 didn't really do this as it was more just an intro to coding in general). Lectures were great - getting shown sample code/programs and seeing stuff that we were learning about actually happening made it really easy to learn. Would definitely recommend as a course regardless of if you have a predetermined path that doesn't require this course or not :)
« Last Edit: September 02, 2020, 11:04:22 pm by fun_jirachi »
Spoiler
HSC 2018: Mod Hist [88] | 2U Maths [98]
HSC 2019: Physics [92] | Chemistry [93] | English Adv [87] | 3U Maths [98] | 4U Maths [97]
ATAR: 99.05

UCAT: 3310 - VR [740] | DM [890] | QR [880] | AR [800]
Guide Links:
Subject Acceleration (2018)
UCAT Question Compilation/FAQ (2020)
Asking good questions

Opengangs

  • New South Welsh
  • Forum Leader
  • ****
  • Posts: 718
  • \(\mathbb{O}_\mathbb{G}\)
  • Respect: +480
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #198 on: August 27, 2020, 05:24:17 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: COMP2511 - Object-Oriented Programming

Contact Hours: 7 hours (2 x 2 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial, 1 x 2 hour lab).

Assumed Knowledge:
Pre-requisite: COMP1531 and either COMP2521 or COMP1927.

Assessment:
- 3 lab assessments (worth 20% - this was to replace the regular lab marking for the 20T2 offering and may not reflect any future offerings).
- 1 assignment (worth 15%).
- 1 project (split into three milestones worth 7 + 11 + 17 marks - worth 35%).
- 1 final exam (worth 30%)

Lecture Recordings? Yes.

Notes/Materials Available: No required text, lecture notes were sufficient.

Textbook: ^

Lecturer(s): Dr. Ashesh Mahidadia

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 2/5

Overall Rating: 1.5/5 (the 1.5 really comes from the 4 tutorial sessions that we had this term lol).

Your Mark/Grade: 89 HD

Comments:
This is one of the few level 2 core courses, along with COMP2521, and it serves to enrich students in the field of software engineering. Students have to work in pairs to develop a project at the end of the term which is marked in Week 10. Like its level 1 counterpart COMP1531, students learn to collaborate with others and develop a habit of writing productive code. As I've worked in software engineering before, I was looking forward to the course. However, the management in this offering left me rather bitter about the course.

One of the major issues with the course this term was the lack of transparency between students and staff. With the staff's decision to completely change the grading system (from lab marking to lab assessments), it should have been clear what the expectations were with these new assessments. However, we received very little information about it until the day of the first rounds of assessments. I personally wanted a bit more clarity as to a) how the assessments would be handled, and b) what specifically are we meant to prepare because when it came to doing the lab assessments, it was not what I expected at all. When I think lab assessments, I think being marked on the contents of our labs rather than a timed pop quiz that required us to read 8pt font code from the tutor's screen.

Another huge issue was the untimely delivery of assignments and, more importantly, the project. The project was scheduled to be released at around Week 3/4 (as per the course outline) but the project specifications was released in late Week 5 which didn't give us a lot of time to work on the milestones (considering we had other assignments due around the same time). I remember having to pull a few all nighters to get the project done in time because of a lot of my other commitments that I had to meet during the term - it wasn't a pleasant experience. As a result, the project felt like a chore and no one wants that! In saying that though, I felt like the contents of the project was quite interesting and it taught me a lot of object-oriented principles which was helpful for the finals.

These two major issues alone was really what put me off COMP2511 because it felt like I had to do more work than was intended just to get through the term. The course dragged on for too long and I felt like I received very little return. I just hope they read the MyExperience and improve on this because they destroyed a perfectly good course this term. Shame.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2020, 07:26:21 pm by Opengangs »

Opengangs

  • New South Welsh
  • Forum Leader
  • ****
  • Posts: 718
  • \(\mathbb{O}_\mathbb{G}\)
  • Respect: +480
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #199 on: August 27, 2020, 05:50:44 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: COMP3121 - Algorithms and Programming TechniquesCOMP9101 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms

Contact Hours:
Depends each week. We had lecture recordings this term instead of an actual lecture so contact hours differed each week.

Assumed Knowledge:
COMP3121: Pre-requisite for the course is either COMP1927 or COMP2521.
COMP9101: Pre-requisite for the course is COMP9021.

Assessment:
- 5 assignments (each worth 10%).
- 1 final exam (worth 50%).

Lecture Recordings? Yes.

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture notes were sufficient.

Textbook: Two textbooks that are recommended for the course are Algorithm Design by Kleinberg and Tardos, and Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leierson, Rivest, and Stein. The former is a bit more friendly to those students who may not have a mathematical background, while the latter is the standard textbook for anyone who's keen on doing more algorithmic study beyond this course. Both textbooks are sufficient reading for the course and their pdf's can be found online.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Aleksander Ignjatovic.

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 3.5/5

Overall Rating: 4/5.

Your Mark/Grade: 100 HD

Comments:
This course is another core course for anyone doing a computer science degree and it is the lower one to COMP3821. The course was brilliant and it really shined in comparison to COMP2511 in terms of quality of assessments. The assessments were well spaced out and Aleks' decision to give us hints a week into the assignment was a step up as it allowed students who struggled with the course to appreciate the complexities (no pun intended) of designing an algorithm. The tutorial sets were really useful, not just for understanding the logic under the hood, but it also demonstrates a way for us to write our responses. Would recommend for those who don't need to take the course, to take the course.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2020, 07:26:43 pm by Opengangs »

Opengangs

  • New South Welsh
  • Forum Leader
  • ****
  • Posts: 718
  • \(\mathbb{O}_\mathbb{G}\)
  • Respect: +480
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #200 on: August 27, 2020, 06:04:59 pm »
+9
Subject Code/Name: MATH2901 - Higher Theory of Statistics

Contact Hours: 6 hours (2 x 2 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial).

Assumed Knowledge: MATH1231 or MATH1241 or MATH1251 or DPST1014.

Assessment:
- 1 quiz (worth 5%).
- 1 midsem (worth 20%).
- 1 assignment (worth 15%).
- 1 final exam (worth 60%).

Lecture Recordings? Yes.

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture notes were sufficient.

Textbook: No required textbook.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Libo Li.

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Rating: 4/5.

Your Mark/Grade: 80 DN

Comments:
This is one of the core level 2 courses for any student undertaking a maths degree and it introduces students to the theory behind some statistical concepts. The course is split into two components: the first half covers the basics of probability theory, while the second half dives into the heart of statistical analysis. By the end of the course, you'll feel more confident with all things statistics.

I actually enjoyed the course for what it is, an introductory statistics course. I found some results really interesting and non-trivial, and it's made me appreciate the stats a lot more than when I began the term. I found the first half of the course a lot more interesting but that's probably because I found the first half more intuitive than the second half. The lecturer is chill af (legit a dude swore on the first day of lectures and the lecturer replied with "yeah same" lmao).

The assessments weren't too difficult either, it was really just testing to see if you actually paid attention in lectures. So in all, I really enjoyed the course. Would recommend.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2020, 07:27:00 pm by Opengangs »

RuiAce

  • ATAR Notes Lecturer
  • Honorary Moderator
  • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes
  • *******
  • Posts: 8814
  • "All models are wrong, but some are useful."
  • Respect: +2575
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #201 on: September 02, 2020, 05:03:36 pm »
+9
Subject Code/Name: COMP9444 - Neural Networks and Deep Learning
Equivalent postgraduate variant: COMP9444 (Identical course code)

Contact Hours: During COVID:
- 2 x 2 hours live sessions (didn't usually take up the full 2 hours).
- However much time required to watch recordings from previous years. (2-4 hours per week.)

Assumed Knowledge: COMP2521 or COMP1927 or MTRN3500

Assessment:
- 30% assignment x2
- 40% final exam

Lecture Recordings? Yes (live sessions were recorded)

Notes/Materials Available: Textbook attached below. Otherwise, there were lecture slides, quizzes, and exercises.

Textbook: Deep Learning By Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville (Online link available: http://www.deeplearningbook.org/). Didn't consider using it so can't comment on it.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Alan Blair

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Rating: 1/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 HD

Comments:
This is one of the level 3+ courses offered by the CSE faculty for the Artificial Intelligence specialisation. Loosely speaking, neural networks learn to accomplish various machine learning tasks but in ways that somehow mimics the human brain (hence their name).

The course isn't actually 3/5 in terms of content difficulty (in fact, some might argue the content difficulty was as low as 1.5/5). The final exam appeared to be quite lenient (especially in contrast to its sister course COMP9417). The assignments weren't exactly hard to code. The difficulty lies in fine tuning the parameters in each network you had to code for said assignments. Accuracy was one of the important aspects we were examined on this term. Unless we achieved sufficiently high accuracy, it was not guaranteed that we'd receive the marks.

Note also that training a neural network takes time (at least, once they become complicated). In the grand scheme of things, there's only so little time you have available to get to the high results. COMP9444 also uses PyTorch as of last year. (Prior to then, TensorFlow was used.)

The quizzes and exercises were good preparation for the finals. It was highly recommended to do them.

The problem I had with the course was that it felt like a bore. I felt like I was learning a lot about neural networks, instead of how to actually do them. The course definitely covered the basic stuff (e.g. backpropagation), but I felt that I just got given a bunch of equations and had to accept them. I couldn't really understand anything about why the equations worked the way they did.

There was also an emphasis on the applications, which genuinely were cool, but like they didn't tell me much. I didn't see the point on being examined on all of these seemingly context-focused questions either. Also, PyTorch felt like something we had to self-learn. Fortunately, it was not hard. But the single lecture on it felt quite vague.

That wasn't with every bit of the course though. To be fair, some stuff like reinforcement learning was made clear. It just felt boring for the most part.

And lastly, despite the final exam being quite an easy one, the negative marking was also a bit stressful to deal with leading up to it. The negative marking felt significantly more punishing for this course than back in COMP3231 (Operating Systems).
« Last Edit: September 02, 2020, 05:13:14 pm by RuiAce »

anomalous

  • Adventurer
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • Respect: +17
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #202 on: September 02, 2020, 05:24:14 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: COMP2511 - Object-Oriented Design and Programming

Contact Hours:
- 2x 2 hour lectures
- 1x 1 hour tutorial, followed by 1x 2 hour lab

Assumed Knowledge: The formal prerequisites are
- COMP1531
- COMP2521 or COMP1927 (is there really anyone left who’s senior enough to have done 1927 but hasn’t done this course or the former 2911 yet, though?)

I might add that if you only recently completed 1531 (as in, within the last year), then the course may assume you’ve covered some domain modelling tools (most notably, UML diagrams) that you perhaps haven’t, so it is worth looking into this before term.

Assessment: Due to the continuation of online delivery in 20T2, assessment priorities shifted to take weight off the final exam and to place it on practical work (i.e. the project and labs). The precise breakdown was
- 3x lab assessments, worth 20% of your course mark (well, kind of - read my comments)
- 1x individual programming assignment, worth 15% of your course mark
- 1x pair project, worth 35% of your course mark (try to organise a partner beforehand)
- final exam, worth 30% of your course mark

Lecture Recordings? Yes, screen and voice recorded.

Notes/Materials Available: The course provides notes and lecture code, however there’s a number of online resources which prove to be invaluable for the more theory-oriented parts of the course - notably, Refactoring Guru as a single point of reference for the design patterns you learn in the course. Some slides in the course take resources directly from Refactoring Guru, so if you don’t feel like listening to lectures, why not cut out the middleman?

Textbook: No prescribed textbook, however Head First Design Patterns by Freeman and Sierra was recommended.

I can't comment on the usefulness of this book since I didn't use it, but some of the lecture examples were lifted straight from this book, so if you're struggling to grasp some of the patterns in lectures, you may be in luck.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Ashesh Mahidadia

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 5/5 just because of how much of a time drain and organisational nightmare it was this particular term

Overall Rating: 0/5 1/5 this term - once again, take this with a grain of salt
(a 0 is pretty harsh on second thought, so I've been generous)

Your Mark/Grade: 96 HD

Comments:
I did not have high hopes for this course going into it, expecting it to be similar in feel to 1531: a bit drab but it’s stuff you ultimately have to know as a CS/SEng student. I'm slightly skeptical of OOP, but the course content was more insightful than what was taught in 1531. The tutors and lab assistants were also great given what they had to put up with. These few points are about all I can say that was good, though.

If I had to sum up what was bad about this course this term, they just completely botched handling assessments, which was mostly the fault of poor planning and even poorer communication from the higher-up course staff. While I know quite a lot of vitriol was directed at the course staff during the term (some of it unsubstantiated and needlessly mean), I really do hope that they take the time to reflect on the genuine feedback they received, because there are many lessons to learn. If you’re the type who wants all of the precise details though, here’s a play-by-play account of the tragedy that was COMP2511 in 20T2 - if not, pick back up at the final paragraph for my final thoughts.

Our labs were made worth 20% of your overall mark, and these marks were distributed across 3 lab assessments scattered across 3 weeks during the term. The first of these assessments was a total disaster, on account of it being a ridiculous 6 minute interrogation format with your tutor/lab assistant in a Teams call asking questions scarcely related to the labs they were supposedly assessing. A lot of the grief this caused could’ve been avoided if there was clear communication telling students what exactly would happen, but they were oddly secretive and waited until a few hours before to even mention more details. Inconsistent messaging regarding whether you actually had to do labs to get marks plagued the other lab assessments too, with the third and final one being cancelled altogether and replaced by an automarked lab. That being said, the other lab assessments weren’t nearly as ridiculous as the first, and they were at least gracious enough to scale the result of that first lab assessment with respect to the others, considering that a lot of students performed very poorly in it.

The major project was also a huge nuisance and my least favourite part of the course by far. It started with not getting pair repositories until over 1 week after the release of the project. The first two milestones were also put too close together, due 1 week apart in week 7 and week 8 respectively. All of this culminated in the second milestone also being a bit of a hassle - we’re meant to have started working on it at the start of week 6, but we didn’t have repositories to allow us to do that properly until a bit into that week, and we were also meant to use the feedback we received from milestone 1, but you wouldn’t receive that until you demonstrated it to your tutor during your lab in week 7! The final milestone also involved a bit too much GUI work in my opinion, and felt much more like a graphic design exercise than OOP. Making extensions mandatory parts in order to get full marks in the milestone is a bit lame too. Perhaps it’s time to come up with a new project, since this one has been used for quite a while now (at least a year if I’m not mistaken).

The exam was a predictable mess. As absolutely no-one saw coming (/s), the load from students trying to submit caused WebCMS to wet itself at crunch time 10 minutes before the exam finished, leaving a lot of people in limbo and unable to submit their work. This isn’t the fault of the course staff as they aren’t responsible for the integrity of CSE’s infrastructure, but I think that going with a harder, lengthier exam with a 24 hour completion window would’ve been better in order to avoid concentrated load. It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before either - I heard one of the security courses last term caused some trouble with CSE’s infrastructure, and that was an even smaller course in terms of students enrolled.

The course is in major need of a return to form, or they need to try another way of dealing with online delivery for 20T3, because their plan this term didn’t work. I’m sure this was just an extreme reaction to having to deliver the course online, because there’d be no reason to do the things they did during physical delivery. Online courses are the meta right now though, and this course was a nightmare this term. It’s a shame that CSE students don’t have any choice but to do this course, especially while it’s in the state it is at the moment, but if you’re able to I would avoid doing it until 2021.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2020, 09:35:34 pm by anomalous »

RuiAce

  • ATAR Notes Lecturer
  • Honorary Moderator
  • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes
  • *******
  • Posts: 8814
  • "All models are wrong, but some are useful."
  • Respect: +2575
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #203 on: September 02, 2020, 05:25:50 pm »
+10
Subject Code/Name: MATH2221 - Higher Theory and Applications of Differential Equations

Contact Hours:
- 2 hr live session (usually aimed to keep within 1 hr though, and was also optional)
- 1 hr tutorial
- However much time required to watch recordings from previous years, mixed with some new re-recorded ones. (Roughly 4 hours per week)

Assumed Knowledge: A mark of 70 in MATH1231 or MATH1241 or MATH1251 (or DPST1014)

Assessment:
- 2 x 10% workshops
- 20% midterm test
- 60% final exam

Lecture Recordings?  Yes (live sessions and tutorials were recorded)

Notes/Materials Available: Full lecture slides given with document camera scribbles from 2019. Some tutorial exercises had full solutions, whilst others just had answers. Live session docs were all released. Past papers for midterm and final prep were released back to 2015.

Textbook: None were prescribed. A variety was stated as recommended reading, but I used none of them.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Jan Zika

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 2.5/5

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 97 HD

Comments:
This is one of the level 2 core courses required as part of a mathematics major. For statistics majors, students have the choice of picking between this, and MATH2521/2621 (complex analysis). Differential equations are something students are very accustomed to from first year; they're essentially just trying to find a function that satisfies an equation, which somehow relates the function to its own derivatives. (Can of course, be higher than the first derivative.) This course does introduce significantly more techniques than in first year.

This course is introduced as a toolbox course (which, I note throws off many pure-math wired students). As with every math course, some element of proof is required. But the main focus of this course is in applying various techniques taught to finding/constructing solutions (or solution representations) to differential equations. For the most part, this course is therefore computational. They try to minimise it in this course, but every once in a while the ability to handle demanding algebraic computations becomes important.

But of course, in terms of computations, what they emphasise on is how well you know the techniques. I saw pretty much every technique get examined (power series, reduction of order, variation of parameters in the assignment, Sturm-Liouville theory, formally self adjoint operators, dynamical systems, Steklov eigenpairs, ...).

The course is absolutely crucial to applied mathematics majors. Anyone considering applied mathematics is strongly advised to take this course in second year, as it is a prerequisite for several level 3 applied courses.

The workshops were basically the assignments as far as I was aware. I think they were renamed just to emphasise the peer review component of it. Which wasn't too bad, in the grand scheme of things.

I was originally going to give this course a 4/5 for the content, but then Jan actually boiled the egg in class this year. That was a 0.5 rating in itself. (Students that will take/have taken the course will know what I mean here.)

RuiAce

  • ATAR Notes Lecturer
  • Honorary Moderator
  • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes
  • *******
  • Posts: 8814
  • "All models are wrong, but some are useful."
  • Respect: +2575
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #204 on: September 02, 2020, 05:52:57 pm »
+10
Subject Code/Name: COMP3900 - Computer Science Project
Equivalent postgraduate variant: COMP9900

Contact Hours:
- 2 hr tutorial every week, but you only had to stay for your portion which was often at most 30mins
- 2 hr lecture in weeks 1, 2, 3, and 10, but they often did not take up the entire 2 hours.
- Not really "contact" time, but an undefinable amount of hours working with your team members on the project itself.

Assumed Knowledge: COMP2521 + COMP1531, as well as 102 UoC completed in the computer science degree. (Note that software engineering students do not need to take this course.)

Assessment:
- 10% Project Proposal
- 2 x 2.5% Progressive Demos
- 2 x 2.5% Retrospectives
- 20% Software Quality (this was the actual code)
- 20% Project Report
- 20% Final Demo/Presentation
- 20% Peer Assessment
- A work diary that was not marked but checked to see what progress you did. (Probably would've been deducted marks from your final result if your diary was blank, suggesting you did nothing.)

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available: Some slides on project management (and of course the assessment guidelines). That was roughly it.

Textbook: N/A

Lecturer(s): Matthew Sladescu

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 4.5/5 (this varies from group to group though)

Overall Rating: 0.1/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not revealing this one because I'm not proud of it.

Comments:
This is one of the later core courses to computer science students. It's not required in software engineering degrees mostly due to the fact that the software engineering degree already mandates many projects of a similar calibre as well.

Honestly, this course was the biggest waste of my time at university thus far. It's really taught me nothing but that at this point in time, I hope I will never be a software engineer in the future. I already hated having to design software from COMP1531, and this is just that on steroids. And no matter how much the software development life cycle makes sense (user stories, gradual coding and testing etc.) makes sense, I don't want to do it.

The default projects lacked too much variety. They literally felt like the same project but just in different applications. Difficulty may have been skewed for us though because the optional project we picked was probably taking things a bit too far. The software worked (at least, it satisfied our user stories), but it cost countless hours of sleep.

And honestly that's why I'm not proud of my "mark". It really felt like my team members' marks, because very often I couldn't even tell what was going on. I was just super blessed to have a ridiculously strong team that didn't hate me for my ineptness in the project. It was also quite stressful seeing the times when they'd have to lose sleep over the tasks at hand.

Proposal also took forever for 10%. It felt like the amount of work required for a 30% weighted task.

So pretty much I could salvage nothing fun out of this course. The 0.1 rating is entirely to credit that our tutor was so extremely nice to us.

MisterNeo

  • MOTM: MAY 2017
  • Forum Obsessive
  • ***
  • Posts: 413
  • Respect: +454
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #205 on: September 02, 2020, 05:56:38 pm »
+9
Subject Code/Name: COMP3121 - Algorithms and Programming Techniques

Contact Hours:
  • 2hrs of lectures a week
  • No tutorials or labs

Assumed Knowledge: COMP2521

Assessment:
  • 5 homework written assignments worth 10% each
  • 50% final exam on Moodle
  • 0-5 bonus marks for Piazza forum participation

Lecture Recordings?  Yes

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture slides, but I mainly used the MIT OpenCourseware resources on Youtube for self-study. The textbook was pretty good for getting a rough idea of what the topic was. The Piazza forum was also very active and you could ask questions anytime about topics you didn't understand.

Textbook: Jon Kleinberg, Eva Tardos - Algorithm Design

Lecturer(s): Aleks Ignjatovic

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T2

Difficulty: 3/5 for the first 2 topics, 2/5 for the rest of the course.

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 98 HD

Comments:

I thought this course was going to be very hard because it looked like a math course (it basically was). Don't worry if you forgot everything you did in COMP2521 because there's a bit of revision of asymptotic analysis.

The topics were also very interesting as it covered different classes of algorithms and it allows you to appreciate why some algorithms behave the way they do. This was also my first time learning how Merge Sort works (I didn't pay attention in 2521 :P) and it makes a lot more sense when viewing it from a mathematical point of view. The first topic looked a lot like your typical Leetcode exercises because they were looking at ways to solve X in a certain time complexity, which I found to be somewhat challenging but also very fun. There were also 2 extra topics on Linear Programming and Intractability which were not assessable in the final exam.

Overall, it's a very fun course. (It's also core for CS/SEng so you have to do it anyway)

fun_jirachi

  • MOTM: AUG 18
  • HSC Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1068
  • All doom and Gloom.
  • Respect: +710
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #206 on: September 03, 2020, 04:21:50 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: MATH1241 - Higher Mathematics 1B

Contact Hours:
2x 2 hour lectures
1x 1 hour lecture
1x 1 hour tutorial

Assumed Knowledge:
MATH1141 is a prereq - thus assumed knowledge

Assessment:
2x Lab Test - 30%
10x Online Tutorial - 10%
1x Assignment - 10%
Final Exam - 50%

Lecture Recordings?
Yes

Notes/Materials Available:
Course pack notes + problems, online tutorials

Textbook:
Used the above

Lecturer(s):
Dr Alessandro Ottazzi, Dr David Angell

Year & Trimester of completion:
2020 T2

Difficulty:
2.5/5

Overall Rating:
4/5

Your Mark/Grade:
90 HD

Comments:
An honestly more enjoyable follow up to MATH1141. While the small stats intro felt a little incomplete and rushed, and while the online stuff felt really dodgy, the course content was cool and it was taught really well. Having David for yet another subject was <3 wow absolutely amazing and Alessandro's pre-lecture playlist was absolute fire (really made online learning that bit better). The course wasn't difficult in itself - it was probably made a lot harder given motivational issues. Relatively standard course otherwise (especially being a mandatory course) - not much else to say.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2020, 04:42:40 pm by fun_jirachi »
Spoiler
HSC 2018: Mod Hist [88] | 2U Maths [98]
HSC 2019: Physics [92] | Chemistry [93] | English Adv [87] | 3U Maths [98] | 4U Maths [97]
ATAR: 99.05

UCAT: 3310 - VR [740] | DM [890] | QR [880] | AR [800]
Guide Links:
Subject Acceleration (2018)
UCAT Question Compilation/FAQ (2020)
Asking good questions

owidjaja

  • National Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1315
  • Bibliophile. Stationery addict.
  • Respect: +1010
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #207 on: September 09, 2020, 11:37:37 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: ENGG1811 - Computing for Engineers

Contact Hours: 2x 2hr lectures, 1x 2 hr lab

Assumed Knowledge: N/A

Assessment:
18% - 7 labs (labs are marked out of 2, 1 mark for completing the lab, 1 mark for a weekly multiple choice question) + 2 virtual labs (1 on Excel, the other on MATLAB)
12% - Week 5 Oral Assessment
10% - Assignment 1
10% - Assignment 2
20% - Week 10 Oral Assessment
30% - Final Exam

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available:

Textbook: N/A

Lecturer(s): Dr Ashesh Mahidadia

Year & Trimester of completion: 2020 T2

Difficulty: 2/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

Comments:
A lot of my friends described this course as a WAM booster. This course isn't too bad but the lectures are kinda dry. The only annoying thing about this subject is the oral assessment, which is basically the lab demonstrator giving you two questions and you have 6 minutes to write the code and explain your working out (without running the code) - maybe I'm just bad at articulating myself but I didn't do so well in these assessments. They also mark you a bit harshly but they do give you partial marks.
2018 HSC: English Advanced | Mathematics | Physics | Modern History | History Extension | Society and Culture | Studies of Religion I

ATAR: 93.60

2019: Aerospace Engineering (Hons)  @ UNSW

owidjaja

  • National Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1315
  • Bibliophile. Stationery addict.
  • Respect: +1010
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #208 on: September 10, 2020, 06:25:18 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: ENGG2400 - Mechanics of Solids 1

Contact Hours: 2x 2hr lectures, 1x 2hr tutorials

Assumed Knowledge: ENGG1300

Assessment:
27% - 3 x Block Tests
19% - 9 x Weekly PSS (tutorial problem attempt) + weekly quizzes + 1 extra mark (apparently comes from you introducing yourself on Teams)
18% - 2 x Lab Report
36% - Final Exam (pre-COVID requirement is that you need 50% in the exam as well to pass but due to COVID, it's changed to 40%)

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available: PSS (Problem Solving Session) tutorial problems are given as a hard copy for free (no soft copy because of copyright) and customised study pack is provided at the end of the term (based on your performance on each topics)

Textbook: Hibbeler, Mechanics of Materials SI 10th edition
Didn't use it that much but some of the tutorial problems are taken from the textbook

Lecturer(s): Dr David C. Kellermann

Year & Trimester of completion: 2020 T2

Difficulty: 5/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

Comments:
This is a direct continuation of ENGG1300 (engineering mechanics). I personally found this course quite difficult mainly because ENGG1300 was a struggle for me. However you can still survive the course as long as you make sure you cover your basics and complete the tutorial problems (both hand in problems and study problems). The block test, however, is kinda yikes. You get 45 minutes to complete 3 (very long) questions - though you get an extra 15 minutes for upload time. I also want to add that there's also the civil engineering stream but they say that the civil stream is a bit easier than the mechanical engineering stream. I just chose the mechanical engineering stream because Kellermann is a good lecturer and he provides a lot of good material.
2018 HSC: English Advanced | Mathematics | Physics | Modern History | History Extension | Society and Culture | Studies of Religion I

ATAR: 93.60

2019: Aerospace Engineering (Hons)  @ UNSW

owidjaja

  • National Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1315
  • Bibliophile. Stationery addict.
  • Respect: +1010
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #209 on: September 10, 2020, 08:46:39 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: PSYC1001 - Psychology 1A

Contact Hours: 4x 1hr lectures (but only in lecture recordings, not live lectures), 1x 1hr tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: N/A

Assessment:
3% - Information Literacy Skills (comprehension online quiz where you need to score 100% but have multiple attempts)
3% - 'Writing Skills' and 'Psychology in the Media' online modules (just need to complete them)
4% - SONA Research participation (but can get an extra credit if you assist in more research)
45% - Building a Rationale assignment (essay)
45% - Final exam

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture slides, tutorial slides and exemplar essay sample to help with the BAR assignment

Textbook: Psychology: Australia & New Zealand (2nd Edition), by Bernstein et al. 2017 (Cengage Australia)
They offer a student discount to get the online textbook. They say it's not compulsory to buy the textbook but the lecturer can also specify if a specific part in the textbook can appear in the final exam.

Lecturer(s): Varies (it changes each week since they're exposing you to different fields of psychology)

Year & Trimester of completion: 2020 T2

Difficulty: 1/5

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Comments:
This was a really fun course to take. The content you learn is very interesting and it's a great introduction to psychology. It's a great Gen Ed course to do. I will say it's quite content heavy and you also need to be cool with writing essays, reading/analysing journal articles and doing some experimental design. My only slight criticism is that they don't do live lectures and only give you lecture recordings or videos so there isn't much interaction with the lecturers.
2018 HSC: English Advanced | Mathematics | Physics | Modern History | History Extension | Society and Culture | Studies of Religion I

ATAR: 93.60

2019: Aerospace Engineering (Hons)  @ UNSW