International Master’s programmes a welcome challenge

The Department of Computer Science can face a new era next autumn, as two out of three specialisation programmes at the Master’s level are planning to adopt English as their teaching language. In future, the courses of Algorithms and machine learning as well as Distributed systems are considered to be given in English, while Software systems continues in Finnish.

Annually, only an estimated 60-70 students graduate as Masters from the Department of Computer Science, while nearly double that amount complete their Bachelor’s degree.

Since Finnish students do not continue to the Masters level, we wish to attract students from abroad by internationalising the teaching. With this reformation, it will be easier for them to attend lectures and exercise sessions instead of studying by themselves.

The goal is not to exclude Finnish students from their studies with a language barrier. The department hopes that most of the students will still be Finns in future. Perhaps some 25% of graduates could be foreigners.

- The larger number of Master’s students ensures that we can offer teaching based on research and a wider range of courses, says Hannu Toivonen, former chair of the department, who supported the reformation.

Jesse Lankila, student and in charge of studies in the student union TKO-äly, thinks the reformation is a good thing. He recommends that students try working in English.

- There are some who may experience difficulties when studying in English. If you are truly interested in a subject, I don’t think the language will pose any problems. The terminology in this field is mainly based on English, and in working life we will inevitably interact with foreigners, so I think it is a valuable experience for students to study in a foreign language and with people from other countries.

Lankila believes that the language change will diversify the teaching more and more.

- Teachers may come from other countries, and the department will gain more fame abroad if students graduate from here.

Though the teaching will be given in English, students will still be able to take separate exams in Finnish. Pirjo Moen, who has participated in the reorganisation, promises that there will still be seminars conducted in Finnish every year. Whether exercise sessions will be given in Finnish remains to be seen.

According to Moen, the internationalised Master’s programmes have attracted attention already, as witnessed by the increasing number of applications.

- Studying and teaching in English is a challenge that we may all benefit from.

 

by Viivu Toikka

Created date

22.02.2010 - 01:00

Brain poetry

In the latest research result of the month section, we interview PhD student Jukka Toivanen about his recent work on brain poetry in the Discovery group led by professor Hannu Toivonen. How can humans and machines be creative together?

Kjell Lemström to be new Head of Studies

Since Jaakko Kurhila left the department to head the Open University, we had to find a new university lecturer to act as head of studies in short order. We received a total of 28 applications. Out of these, and after a preliminary qualification round, evaluations, interviews, and a department council hearing, Kjell Lemström (KL) was elected for the post. He started working as the department's Head of Studies on 2 March 2015, so the Head of the department (JP) conducted the following induction interview that very week.

This is by no means the first time Kjell has been employed by the department. He defended his thesis on ‘String Matching Techniques for Music Retrieval’ in 2000, and has held numerous teaching and research positions both before and after that, until he transferred to the Laurea University of Applied Sciences in 2011 (luckily, that was only temporary).

Head of Studies Jaakko Kurhila to head Open University

The Head of Studies at the department, University Lecturer Jaakko Kurhila, has been elected to the post of director of the Open University at the University of Helsinki. It was a tough race: all in all, 39 applicants sought the post, some of them through the Mercuri Urval headhunting process. After a consultant evaluation, interviews, and aptitude assessments, the preparatory committee for the post, the steering committee for the Open University, and the rector of the university came to a unanimous decision to select Jaakko, and the contract is already being drawn up.

Being selected from this prestigious group of applicants, and after such a thorough process, is indisputable proof of the qualifications of Jaakko and the high esteem the academic community has for him. The department extends its warmest congratulations to Jaakko for this career development and is proud of the success of its protégé.

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Standardization

In the fourth research result of the month, we report a joint work between the UH NODES group and the Cambridge NetOS group, lead by Prof. Sasu Tarkoma and Prof. Jon Crowcroft, respectively. Their work recently received the best paper award "Best of CCR" from ACM SIGCOMM.