Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Short note on CSUI’s curricula

I used to have a blog at blogspot. Sadly, it was neglected for a very long time. In fact, my real last post was when I was still living in the student dorm while I was studying in Dresden, Germany. This is partly because we didn't have internet cable connection after we moved away from the student dorm as we didn't get a place for a family, but also mainly due to my laziness.

My wife often remarks that I can and should write more. Considering that I do have a quite extensive personal library, she is obviously not far off the mark. What remains is the motivation to do that. Let's hope that it does not diminish over time....

Move on to today's issues. In the last two days, all (well, actually not all, as some are missing due to other commitments) academic staff, i.e., lecturer met in campus to discuss the forthcoming change to our bachelor programs in computer science and information systems. This change is actually periodical, once for every four years, to anticipate new developments and challenges, both internal and external.

Actually, after twice doing this 'rapat kerja' (yesteryear and the year before that), I expected that there will be a quite major change to the curricula, especially since many of us view that the separation between CS and IS program is rather unclear. Even I have hinted some of my students with the forthcoming changes, e.g., compiler techniques course is mandatory, data structure course is offered in the 2nd semester, etc.

However, the faculty also received some external inputs which imply that the level of programming skill of our graduates tends to decrease. This forced us to rethink again about the changes. In the end, we still arrive to the programming courses arrangement similar to what we do in the 2006-Curricula, namely starting from Dasar-Dasar Pemrograman (in C), followed by Desain & Pemrograman Berorientasi Objek (in Java) and then in the 3rd semester, followed with Struktur Data & Algoritma (in Java).

Some expected changes were retained though. This is mainly about the strengthening of separation between CS and IS stream. Some architecture & hardware-related courses for IS will be redesigned, while overall, there will be many more new, exciting, elective courses to be offered, including Semantic Web... :-).

Some works still need to be done to finalize the curricula, but it is expected to be used starting from the next semester. Hopefully this will lead to better direction for Fasilkom UI in the future... :-)

No comments:

Post a Comment