The CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee (UGSC) organized the annual undergraduate forum on Feb. 9, '12 in KH 190. The forum started at about 5:30 pm and continued till about 7:00 pm, with most students staying on till near the end. The summary below tries to describe the main points that were made during the discussions.
One peculiarity of the semester courses is that some courses have dual numbers. For example, 3231 and 5231 are the same course (Software engineering techniques); similarly, 3241 and 5241 are both the same course (Introduction to database systems). One difference between the 3000-level numbers and the corresponding 5000-level number for the same course is that the former are 3 credit-hours while the latter are 2 cr-hrs. The purpose of this scheme is to allow graduate students who did not take these courses as part of their undergraduate programs and are not allowed to register for 3000-level courses will still be able to take the course by registering for the 5000-level course. But the difference in credit hour means that these graduate students will not be able to get as many credit hours for these courses as undergraduate students in the courses (since the courses are intended for undergraduate students); put differently, graduate students will get less credit (2 hours instead of 3) for the same work as undergraduate students. The bottomline, as far as BS-CSE, BS-CIS, and BA-CIS students are concerned is to make sure to register for the 3000-level number course in such cases, not the 5000-level number.
Most of the courses have been approved at all levels of the university. However, some of the prerequisites information has been incorrectly transcribed in the Registrar's database. Hence students should refer to the above page for accurate information about prerequistes. (We are working with the Registrar's Office to get the information in the Registrar's database corrected.) Any questions or comments about the courses, including prerequisites, exclusions etc. should be emailed to Bruce Weide (weide AT cse.ohio-state.edu) and/or Neelam Soundarajan (neelam AT cse.ohio-state.edu).