The course structure of this new department brings into focus its overlap with existing programmes. More than half of its DCs are courses from existing departments, all of which, barring CS771, are themselves DCs in their respective departments. Similarly, over 75% of the DEs are drawn from existing departments. This brings up questions about accommodating DIS students alongside existing enrolments and, more importantly, how much of the programme, in its current form, is actually distinct from what is already being offered across the institute.

Similar concerns were shared by several departments during the feedback process discussed in the SEPC meeting. Vox spoke to Prof. Sagar (SUGC Chairperson), he mentioned, “students of Intelligent Systems would attend these common courses along with students from the respective departments. A Special Permission has been obtained from the HODs of CSE, EE and ME departments, under a three-year agreement, with course instructors and TAs taking on this additional teaching responsibility.” 

The current B.Tech. intake of the department is around 31 students. Given the relatively large class sizes of these existing departments, accommodating this additional cohort is unlikely to be difficult at the present scale. As the department grows, though, the same arrangement may have to be revisited depending on student intake and the teaching capacity of the departments involved. The departments agreeing to the arrangement asked for improvements to lab facilities and other infrastructure, which SIS committed to providing. 

The overlap also brings up a more specific question: how should these common courses be numbered? There were initial discussions around renumbering or dual-numbering these courses as ISXXX course codes, with the proposal that any course in the template not offered natively by the IS department would have to be renumbered or dual-numbered before IS students could count it towards their DC or Basket DE requirements. Under this arrangement, it was to be mandated that the students would have to register only for the IS-numbered version to fulfil these requirements, and a student could not register for the same course twice under different numbers,e.g., taking IS271 as a DC and CS771 as an OE in a subsequent semester. However, this proposal was later dropped, citing logistical difficulties in offering the courses and checking for overlaps. The institute has been rather reluctant to adopt such a system in the past.

Another option considered was to offer these common courses as Inter-Disciplinary Courses (IDCs). Under the IDC mechanism, a course is jointly offered by multiple departments, with the participating departments sharing the teaching responsibilities among faculty and TAs. So far, this mechanism has been used primarily for postgraduate courses only.

With the faculty hiring still under way and a limited number of PhDs to serve as TAs, offering these courses as IDCs is not particularly feasible at this stage. Moreover, given that many of the borrowed courses are central to their respective branches, it did not make sense to offer them as IDCs by stripping off their original numbering.  

The remaining option, therefore, was to retain the existing course codes. While this does not pose a logistical difficulty, it does result in an unusual situation where around two-thirds of all DCs and DEs in the DIS curriculum carry course codes belonging to other departments. 

Beyond these directly shared courses, there is also a considerable overlap in course content with existing offerings in AI/ML across the institute. To address this, it was initially suggested that a warning be placed on the Pingala student pre-registration portal stating that “IS students would not be allowed to claim credit for courses with more than 40% overlap with a compulsory course (IC, DC, ESO, SCHEME) or an already credited course.” The IS School asked to facilitate the DUGC/DPGC in identifying and blocking such requests. 

However, enforcing such a provision could present a practical challenge, especially when it comes to identifying the extent of overlap between courses. Ensuring that such overlaps are consistently identified and accounted for could therefore remain an important consideration as the programme expands. 

When Vox Populi last reviewed the curriculum in late June, out of the 7 new courses being offered, proposals for five courses had been sent for review under the Academic Senate, four of which had been approved. The proposed “Ethics of AI” course was still under discussion, with a similar course already being offered by the Department of HSS. It was not made clear whether the new course would take a more technical approach or follow the HSS perspective in terms of its content.