TAD/UCRACK June 29

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TAD/UCRACK Meeting Minutes

June 28, 2006

Minutes document created: June 29, 2006

Attendees: Bartram, BenYoussef, Bowes, Budd, Calvert, Dill, Fisher, Gromala, Hatala, Shaw, Woodbury

Tom Calvert introduced a series of high-level options to consider for adjustment of the TAD curriculum (Repeated below in slightly modified form).

  1. Problems facing TAD
    1. The primary problems expressed with the current TAD stream were low enrollments and an inadequately descriptive name.
    2. Causes of low enrollments include
      1. Poor name yields low external visibility
      2. Lack of clarity about what TAD is:
        1. Why is TAD interesting and important ?
        2. What is TAD as a minor, a supplement to non-CS?
        3. What is the value added for Media people? Games people?
        4. It isn’t CS lite, so what is it?
        5. Where does one get TAD jobs?
      1. Inadequate advisement of first and second year undergraduates.
      2. We recognize across SIAT that the skills that TAD offers are vital to student projects and future careers.
  2. Findings on radical rework of TAD:
    1. Option 3 has the drawback of there being no place for technology specialist students to go within SIAT, and is out of keeping with the fact that approximately half of SIAT faculty are Scientists or Computer Scientists.
    1. Everyone agrees that our path to curricular enlightenment lies in incorporating a more extensive version of Tom Calvert's Option 1 longitudinally, as a process towards realizing Tom Calvert's more visionary Option 2.
    2. That is to say, Tom's option 1 specifies only minor changes to courses, but minor tinkering is not tenable considering that we have to move from 50 to 30-something classes.
    3. Instead, we need to re-work existing classes in a way that gets at our Option 2 goals without proposing 30-something NEW classes.
    1. Rob Woodbury mentions the 50-year test as a means of judging quality.
    2. There has been plenty of discussion online since the meeting. Hopefully we can get an evocative name.
    3. Suggested Concentration names (Alpha Order):
      1. DIHCS Design of Interactive Human-Centred Systems
      2. HCII Human-Centred Information Interaction
      3. HCI Human-Centred Informatics
      4. HCI Human-Computer Interaction
      5. HCS Human-Centred Systems
      6. HCT Human-Centred Technology
      7. HII Human-Information Interaction
      8. HIS Human-Information Systems
      9. HIT Human-Information Technology
      10. I Information
      11. I Informatics
      12. IS Information Science
      13. IS Informatics Science
      14. MI Media Informatics
      15. THIS Technology of Human Interactive Systems
    1. While no one saw things missing from the 7 content areas identified, there was a suggestion that the software engineering process/project management content can be handled in two ways :
      1. Make project management content core in the second year, whether as a specific course (perhaps purchased from business) or embedded in other core courses
      2. Embed the SE part of the content in our other streams' specialization courses. This has the fortunate result of bringing TAD content areas to 6
  2. There was much ensuing discussion on the structure of the second year, entry points and exposure options for TAD stream.
    1. There was a strongly expressed view against 2nd year stream introduction courses used as a gate to the upper division stream courses. The argument was that we should aim to preserve the ability for all students going through the 2nd year core to take any stream.
    2. It was argued that our intake to SIAT be organized so that students in any of the first year Surrey cohorts should be able to enter SIAT. Of course, there would be course requirements specific to SIAT in the electives to be chosen.
    3. A mandatory 4th year project may not be a good idea. Students not interested in (and thus underperforming in) a project should be able to finish their degree in another way. The project might be made into the honours, though it was thought that this might interfere with the current research honours and that it might make the project too inaccessible. The project might be an elective option, with students not taking the project having to take additional UD SIAT courses. We did not have time to fully explore this issue.



Options for TAD

28 June 2006

Tom Calvert

In approaching this we said there would be no sacred cows. In that spirit I set out some radical alternatives. #4 could be combined with any of 1, 2, or 3.

  1. Essentially what we have now. Fine tune courses. Look at how Studio courses can be shared with other streams.
    • Pro’s: Little change needed to curriculum.
    • Con’s: Difficult to attract students
  2. Completely redesign courses. Don’t use existing Computing or Math courses but create totally new courses specifically geared to teaching math, computation, and technology to artists, designers, etc.
    • Pro’s: Curriculum is likely to be much more attractive to students
    • Con’s: a lot of work and may face opposition in CMPT and Math

-- BSc and BA.

    • Pro’s: The SIAT programs truly focus on Arts AND Technology. Simplifies curriculum.
  1. Eliminate TAD as a stream and negotiate a true joint major with Computing Science.
    • Pro’s: Likely to be more attractive to students than #1.


Information Concentration content areas Initial List

June 28, 2006


  1. Infovis/ graphics for visualisation
  2. Knowledge and information architectures (back end)
    • Desktop authoring environments/heterogeneous systems and challenges/semantic heterogeneity
    • Interaction technologies (input, ubicomp)
  3. Senior HCI (45x)
    • Builds on Junior HCI (IAT 201) + IAT 10x Design
  4. Software engineering
    • process and structures
    • project management
    • design patterns a la gamma
    • SE methods and conventions
    • UML techniques
    • Practice-based
    • Rob’s systems integration/Semantic Heterogeneity problems may be useful as a case study here as well
  5. computational media (audio, video, animation, image processing )
    • technologies of Animation, Video, Image processing
  6. video game design and programming

Can we have this in conjunction with a 3rd year core course (across specializations) in interaction science and cognition? Fundamental CS areas to cover in appropriate context

  • networks
  • operating systems
  • complexity and analysis
  • computer architectures
  • signal processing







There are 5 classes in the lower division. One can select among the upper division classes to fill out the number of required classes.


GaTech Media Thread: CS1315 Introduction to Media Computation, 3 CS1331 Introduction to Object-oriented Programming, 3 CS1332 Data structures and algorithms, 3 CS2260 Media Device Architectures, 3 CS2340 Objects and Design, 3 CS3451 Computer Graphics, 3 Must come after MATH2605 and 2110 or 2260 Pick 2 of the following: • CS4455 Video Game Design and Programming, 3 • • CS4480 Digital Video Special Effects, 3 • • CS4496 Computer Animation, 3 

           CS4760 Mixed Reality Experience Design, 3

Other electives: • CS3640 Computational Photography, 3 • CS4230 Distributed Simulation Systems, 3 • CS4460 Information Visualization, 3 • CS4470 Introduction to User Interface Software, 3 • CS4590 Computer Audio, 3 • CS4760 Mixed Reality Experience Design, 3

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