Innovative teaching

The Finnish Higher Education Council re-elected the department as a national centre of excellence in higher education, this time for the years 2010-2012. The status of centre of excellence is a significant achievement. It was only conferred on 10 units in Finland this time, and the department was one of two units that were selected for their second period.

The centre of excellence status is the result of long-term, consistent development of teaching and learning, such measures as creating learning-goal matrices for courses in connection with the new syllabus, removing some bottlenecks in degree progress, and supporting student-centred activities - both the multifaceted activities of the student union TKO-äly to support learning and the course organised by the new Lambda society - were taken during the past year.

The new sub-programme structure and degree requirements of the department were designed during the winter and spring, and came into force from the beginning of autumn 2008. There are now three sub-programmes at the department: algorithms and machine learning, distributed systems and data communications, and software systems. Now the teaching at the department is grouped more logically than before, and the new sub-programmes correlate more clearly with the focuses of research at the department. One of the principles while renewing the degree was, indeed, to further base the MSc-level teaching on the strengths in research at the department. The Department of Computer Science also has two international Master's programmes, in bioinformatics (MBI) and information and communications technology (CBU-ICT).

Here are some good details from the report(whole report can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of the page):

 

Teaching

The teaching/educational programme of the department clearly rests on a very solid pedagogical basis. -- Research and teaching are very well integrated and support each other. 

 

Curriculum and course design

The development and the design of the curriculum is well-structured. -- The staff are very committed. The bachelor’s level curriculum has a strong profile as well as the three lines of master’s programmes provided by the department. The students participate in the course design. -- Project studies facilitate exposure to real life situations. -- The balance between lectures, group work and project works is good.

 

Development of teaching

The discipline is in a state of continuous development and change, and the department has acted systematically in development work. The staff are highly committed to continuous development work.

 

Studing and students

The atmosphere of the unit is very supportive and motivating. Students and staff cooperate closely both formally and informally.-- The department seems to be highly attractive at the international level and has a high number of international graduate and postgraduate students.

 

Orientoivissa opinnoissa tehdään pelin henki selväksi

 


Laitoksen opetuksen kehittämisessä vahvasti vaikuttaneelle lehtori Heikki Lokille myönnettiin 26.3.2009 Eino Kaila –palkinto ansiokkaasta toiminnasta yliopisto-opettajana.

Year 2007 a large survey of computer science research was made. This survey also noted our department high quality students:

The Department attracts outstanding students and has excellent international network of collaborations and exchange visits.2

 

 

[1] The Finnish Higher Education Council: Centres of Excellence in Finnish University Education 2010–2012 (report 03:2009), p. 68-69.

[2] Academy of Finland: Computer Science Research in Finland 2000–2006: International Evaluation (Publication of the Academy of Finland 8/07), s. 43-44.

Created date

05.02.2010 - 11:03

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.