Author: Patrick Lam
Program design is heavily constrained, and there are some sacred cows that I am not willing to explore today. However, I'll explain the rationale behind some of our current program design choices.
Recent changes. Following ECE changes, the class of 2022 was the first class to have MATH 135 in 1A and ECE 140 in 1B (we swapped the course order). The class of 2021 had higher averages in 1A and fewer fails than the class of 2022. We don't yet know what is going to happen in 1B for the class of 2022.
First Year. First-year SE students take the same circuits courses as first-year ECE students for historical reasons: when SE was a new program, the Director at the time wanted there to be no doubts about the technical abilities of SE students. Also, we've discussed ECE 105/106, which are among the hardest first-year physics courses at the University. Student and faculty consensus was that these courses help develop study skills. We would rather have students struggle in first year and have an easier time later, rather than breeze through first year and fail out of second year.
We have received feedback from a former SE director that it would be a mistake to add a half course to 1B: applying for co-op jobs for the first time imposes workload similar to a half course already, so we would just be piling on the work. Please consider that when you put courses in first year.
Second Year. We want to preserve a synergy between CS 241 and ECE 222, which discuss complementary material. MSCI 261 exceeds the required content on engineering economics; ECE 192 would exceed the required hours with less of a margin. SE 2xx could be a second year database course. We would like to move MATH 213 to 3A so that it is closer than SE 380 in 3B, its prerequisite. That makes 2B only 5 courses.
Third and Fourth Year. In the past, students have appreciated 3A being 5 courses. I've proposed MATH 213 in 3A, which brings it to 6 courses. If we drop CS 348 in 3B, then we can move ECE 358 to 3B, which could leverage synergies with SE 380. Finally, fourth year would be 5 courses each term.
Students appreciate the existence of a database course in principle, but over the past few years, have tended to be unhappy with the course they actually get. I also believe that 3B is rather late to see material which students may have seen on co-op to some extent.
Capstone Design Project. A Capstone Design Project is now a key part of all undergraduate Engineering programs at Waterloo. We believe that it is critical that you plan and execute a project where you take the lead in problem selection; through university, you always do assignments and projects that we assign. Choosing a project is something that is out of many students’ comfort zones (since you haven’t done one and carried it through, for the most part), and we believe that the three-course sequence gives you more practice at it. Two courses doesn’t give you enough chances to work through failures.
Sacred cows and issues on my radar. For your information: