COMP4920 Notices

Tomorrow's guest lecture on Ethical Procurement by Jasmin Lewis

Posted by Flora Salim Monday 27 October 2025, 05:15:45 PM.

Hi all,

Tomorrow we will start with a recap from me, and I'll cover AGI, SDGs, and AI for good from 2-2.50pm, followed by a short break.

Then from 3-4pm we'll have a guest lecture on Ethical Procurement by Jasmin Lewis.

Jasmin is an experienced sustainability professional with over six years of expertise in sustainability standards, certification, and research. As UNSW’s Sustainable Procurement Manager, she works closely with stakeholders across environmental, modern slavery, and social impact areas to align procurement practices with broader sustainability goals.

Before joining UNSW, Jasmin contributed to global sustainability efforts at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in Geneva, managing the development and publication of international standards for environmental, health, safety, and social responsibility. Jasmin is passionate about leveraging procurement as a force for positive change, driving meaningful outcomes for organisations and communities alike .

COMP9420 – Ethical Procurement

The lecture introduces the concept of Ethical and Sustainable procurement - what sustainable and ethical procurement practices look like, and how organisations like UNSW consider environmental, social, and ethical impacts when procuring IT hardware and software and services. Using real examples of ethical procurement and challenges in the corporate world and UNSW’s supply chains, the session highlights issues such as carbon emissions, e-waste , modern slavery and labour rights . These considerations will challenge us to think about where our technology comes from, who makes it, and how our choices as future IT professionals can help build a more responsible and sustainable digital future.

Structure:

1. Introduction and context ( 5 mins )

2. Global Ethics Frameworks and Sustainable Procurement ( 10 mins )

3. The Impacts of Technology ( 10 mins )

4. Sustainable Procurement in Action: UNSW ( 10 mins )

5. Ethics in the IT Profession ( 10 mins )

6. Questions and discussion ( 10 mins )

It will be an awesome lecture.

See you tomorrow 2-4 @ the Science theatre.

Best regards,

Flora

Group assessment - Presentation and project report

Posted by Flora Salim Monday 27 October 2025, 04:26:56 PM.

Please note that your group assignment slides were due today 9am. There was an announcement earlier by your course admin Edward Norman: "For completions sake, can you all submit your slides by 5pm today - outstanding non-submissions may run the risk of causing your whole group to receive CN - your tutor will be contacting you if this is the case."

The group project, with the two components of deliverables (presentation and report) are marked in conjunction as they belong to the same group of assessments. It should go without saying that assessment tasks, particularly group assessments, are not 'optional', and that actively choosing not to participate in group work is in direct violation of the UNSW code of conduct. Failure to submit either part of this assessment task without special consideration will result in CN for the task overall, with the possibility of escalation to academic misconduct - pending an interview with the course coordinators.

Therefore, if you deliver the presentation, but fail to submit your report (that is, actively choosing to not participate in the assessment you have been set - which comprises a major part of this course), you will receive CN in both, even if your group receives CO or CM in their presentation. It has come to the attention of the teaching staff that certain students plan on taking this course of action, which explicitly contradicts the purpose and learning outcomes of this course, which seek to convey the importance of professionalism and ethical conduct in our graduates.

With all that in mind, we hope that you're putting your best effort in this course, and respect the effort from the teaching team as well as your group members and class peers.

Thank you for your attention.
See you in lecture tomorrow.


Best wishes,
Flora & Seb & the teaching team

Presentation Slide Submission

Posted by Edward Norman Monday 27 October 2025, 09:23:57 AM, last modified Monday 27 October 2025, 09:24:29 AM.

Hello Students,
As you should all be aware - your group presentation slides were due for submission at 9am this morning. This was to ensure that all student groups had an equal amount of time to prepare their slides for the presentations that will be occurring this week (and next). As it stands, there are 220 students who have not submitted anything on moodle? This represents almost 20% of the cohort...

This is not a great outcome, I am sure we will receive a deluge of suggestions that you were under the impression that only one of your group members needed to submit, but this is not the case. Particularly if nobody in your group submitted your slides by 9am, then this would be likely grounds for CN for the group presentation - as you have missed the deadline. For completions sake, can you all submit your slides by 5pm today - outstanding non-submissions may run the risk of causing your whole group to receive CN - your tutor will be contacting you if this is the case.

This will be the same situation for your group report, you should all submit an item for assessment for all of your assessment tasks, even just so that we have a record of the fact that you have conducted and submitted the assessment task by the due date.

Regards,
Edward

MOODLE MARKS

Posted by Edward Norman Friday 17 October 2025, 05:57:03 PM, last modified Friday 17 October 2025, 06:05:27 PM.

Hello Students!

Your marks were released at 5:00 PM today, I forgot that the 1/2/3 does not get masked in moodle, so please note the following:

1. NOT-YET-COMPETENT (CN)
2. COMPETENT (CO)
3. COMPETENT WITH MERIT (CM)

The grade you received corresponds to the above. If you would like to discuss your grade please talk to your tutor in the first instance, they will pass it onto me if they cannot resolve for you, and I will then discuss with you.

Regards,
Edward

Note: you are still able to get CO for the course overall if you got a CN in essay one, you just need to receive CO for the remaining assessments.

Correction to yesterday's lecture!

Posted by Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson Thursday 09 October 2025, 11:48:50 AM.

CORRECTION - ImageNet was not made by Google, it was created in 2007 by researchers at Stanford University and Princeton University. Google made Google Photo, which was similarly flawed.

Oops!!

Mea culpa - there are so many examples that I am getting them mixed up : /

All best,

Seb

Study Questions for Week 4 Lecture 2

Posted by Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson Wednesday 08 October 2025, 01:41:09 PM.

Hi everyone!

It was great to see you again today, and I am looking forward to next week. Thank you for all of your great questions! It was the most fun I have had giving a lecture for some time : )

We did not make it to the Study Questions slide, so here they are:

(1) Is a desire for value neutrality value neutral?

(2) What happens is we replace the causal model of explanation with a statistical model of explanation?

The first question invites you to think carefully about the nature of the pursuit of value neutrality itself.

The second question invites you to engage carefully with this week’s reading for the second lecture.

All best,

Se

Good luck with your first essay!

Posted by Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson Friday 03 October 2025, 10:37:03 AM.

Hi everyone : )

Just a quick note to wish you all the very best of luck with your first essay today.

Have a marvellous long weekend!

All best,

Seb

4920ers - Welcome to Week 1 (with corrections. Lectures are on Tue 2-4 and Wed 11-1)

Posted by Flora Salim Monday 15 September 2025, 08:20:31 PM, last modified Monday 15 September 2025, 09:14:07 PM.

Hi all,

It's week 1! Welcome back.

I have some students emailing me about lectures. If you're only registered for online, I still encourage you to attend the physical face-to-face lectures.
Our lecture times and locations are:
- Tuesdays 2pm-4pm at the Science Theatre (apologies! I had a typo. The lectures are on Tuesdays, not Thu).
- Wednesdays 11am-1pm at the Law Lecture Theatre.

The lectures are recorded but not livestreamed.

I'm confident we can fit as many of you who wish to attend the lectures in person, as in the many years we have this course running, it has never been overly full.

This week Seb will cover Utilitarianian ethics, and Deontological ethics (Tue), and Virtue ethics (Wed), and will talk about essay writing too.

So dont hesitate to come in. And we have SNACKS! :) You wouldn't want to miss these appetising lectures and snacks.

Best regards,

Flora & Seb

Welcome to COMP4920!

Posted by Flora Salim Thursday 11 September 2025, 07:53:44 PM.

Hi,

Welcome to 4920.

We're all looking forward to meeting you! To familiarise yourself, please check out the course outline.
https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP4920/25T3/outline

We are not using the forums on WebCMS.
We use discourse instead : https://discourse02.cse.unsw.edu.au/25T3/COMP4920
Please join us there.

See you in class next week!
https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP4920/25T3/timetable

Best wishes,
Flora, Seb, your course admins (Edward, Phil, Weizhen), and all the tutors.