Honours Unit List for 2008
Honours units are subject to approval. You are also able to take units from other disciplines and from the postgraduate program, and one third-year unit; but note that at least three of your units should come from the selection below. For further information, please contact Mark Dras (Honours Convenor).
Seminar Unit
COMP496 Research Methods and Communication (Prof Robert Dale and others)
This unit is a generic skills unit to prepare you for academic writing (as in your thesis) and presentations (of which you will have to make at least three over the course of the year), as well as other issues in conducting research, such as reviewing and ethics. This class is compulsory for all honours students, and is in addition to the four unit coursework load.
In 2008 the unit will run in both semesters.
Nominated time (first semester): Monday 5-8pm Location (first semester): E6A357
First Half
COMP448
Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing (Prof Robert Dale, Dr Diego Molla
Aliod)
Centre for Language
Technology
This is the core Language Technology unit at honours level.
In this unit, we look at two cutting edge natural language processing technologies that are likely to have significant commercial impact over the next few years: information extraction, where we try to distill key information from larger collections of text; and question answering, where we attempt to move from the existing web interaction paradigm of query-based searches that return sets of documents to a more focussed model where we provide natural language questions that return answers.
Nominated times: Tuesday 2-5pm.
COMP467 Computer Games Design and Implementation (Dr Manolya
Kavakli, Dr Michael
Hitchens)
Virtual and
Interactive Simulations of Reality
This subject provides the student with an overview of the history of games, game genres, genre breaking games, focusing on the game development and design process. The subject also develops skills in game architecture and engineering presenting an introduction to games technology. Upon completion of this subject, students will be able to:
The unit has online documentation and uses WEB-CT for the presentation of the text material, lecture slides, assignments, etc.
- understand the development of the present state of the games industry;
- understand the game development process;
- write design documents of a computer game;
- use a game engine to develop a computer game; and
- present a game proposal.
Nominated times: Tuesday 11-1
COMP429 Introduction to Multiagent Systems
(Assoc
Prof Mehmet Orgun,
Dr Abhaya Nayak)
Intelligent
Systems Group (ISG)
Multiagent systems have emerged as one of the most important areas of research and development in information technology in the 1990s. A multiagent system is one composed of multiple interacting software components known as agents, which are typically capable of cooperating to solve problems that are beyond the abilities of any individual member. Multiagent systems are important primarily because they have been found to have very wide applicability, in areas as diverse as industrial process control and electronic commerce. This unit will begin by introducing the student to the notion of an agent, and will lead them to an understanding of what an agent is, how they can be constructed, and how agents can be made to cooperate effectively with one-another to solve problems.
Nominated times: Friday 10am-1pm
ITEC802
Object Oriented Technology
This is a unit run by the Postgraduate Professional Development Program; please follow the ITEC802 link for a unit description.
ITEC833
Web Services
This is a unit run by the Postgraduate Professional Development Program; please follow the ITEC833 link for a unit description.
Second Half
COMP475 Theories of
Programming Languages
(Assoc
Prof Dom
Verity,
Assoc Prof Annabelle McIver)
A significant body of formal theory underlies the design and implementation of modern programming languages. An understanding of this theory and an ability to apply it is an important pre-cursor to research in this area. This unit motivates and describes the main theoretical frameworks that are in current use and provides students with experience in using them to describe and analyse real programming language features, with a focus on functional programming.
While this unit will cover quite a bit of theoretical material, our overall focus will be on the practical application of those methods. In particular, we will NOT be asking you to prove lots of theorems. Thus this unit will also provide a valuable introduction to the functional programming paradigm, an approach to programming that you probably won't have met in the undergraduate curriculum.
This unit makes no assumption that you have completed any formal study in the implementation of programming languages - although the COMP332 "Programming Languages" unit would certainly provide you with a solid foundation from which to embark upon studying the material here. Instead, we expect you to be a keen programmer who has experience in more than one programming language. You should also be comfortable with some discrete Mathematics at the level expect of students in COMP225 "Algorithms and Data Structures" or MATH237 "Discrete Mathematics IIC", although again this unit does not explicitly assume that you have studied either of these.
Nominated times: Tuesday 2-4pm, E6A357
ITEC802
Object Oriented Technology
This is a unit run by the Postgraduate Professional Development Program; please follow the ITEC802 link for a unit description.
ITEC830 XML Technologies
This is a unit run by the Postgraduate Professional Development Program; please follow the ITEC830 link for a unit description.
ITEC851
System and Network Technologies
This is a unit run by the Postgraduate Professional Development Program; please follow the ITEC851 link for a unit description.