Unique open online programming course starts again at Helsinki University

This is the fifth year in a row that the massive open online course (MOOC) will start at the University of Helsinki. Finns can take the course just for fun, as a part of their upper-secondary education, or even as an entrance exam to the university.

The course is free of charge, and it is so basic that students with no experience of programming can follow it.

Previous courses have been attended by thousands of enthusiastic students, who have found it useful and fun. The 14-week course follows the same requirements as the basic programming courses of the department, introducing algorithmic thinking, modern object-oriented programming, and the relevant issue of code quality in software engineering.

 

Created date

22.01.2016 - 17:07

Congratulations to our good teacher!

The instruction at the Department of Computer Science continues in the limelight; this time in the form of personal recognition, as the student union at the University of Helsinki has awarded the Magister Bonus prize of 2011 to University Lecturer Matti Luukkainen. Matti was interviewed about teaching and studying by Ella Peltonen from TKO-äly immediately after the festivities.

 

 

From professor to CTO

As announced by Nokia on Thursday 22 September 2011, Henry Tirri had been appointed Chief Technology Officer at Nokia and Executive Vice President of the Nokia Leadership Team, effective from that date. According to the bulletin, ‘As Chief Technology Officer, Tirri assumes responsibility for the CTO organization, charged with setting Nokia's technology agenda both now and in the future, and driving core innovation to enable business development opportunities.”

A link to the university

The Linkki centre opened at the Helsinki University Department of Computer Science last Friday. The centre offers all kinds of fun activities like games programming, and an online programming course open to all upper-secondary students, starting at the beginning of next year.

Rocking against cancer

This is the story of Riku Katainen, an eternal student who started with computer science and then got stuck in the bioinformatics Master’s programme. By chance, he grappled a challenge larger than himself.This heavy-metal cliché defected from his original research career in Veli Mäkinen’s SuDS group in Kumpula to Lauri Aaltonen’s research group on cancer genetics in Meilahti.His primary duties involve creating visualisation and analysis software for genetic sequence data, with which to discover gene defects in cancer patients.Though the challenge of creating the program initially brought Riku to the limits of his tolerance, all his hard work bore fruit in the end.Let us hear him tell the story.