After Facebook visit, studying looks like work

University research and education laboratory Software Factory has launched a new kind of Open Source collaboration with the software industry and leading universities like Stanford University and MIT.

How do we keep students engaged until graduation, and how could young people be offered something they cannot already learn at work? These are big enough challenges for more than one university.

– When I think about working life and my own experiences of it, this start in Silicon Valley definitely boosted my motivation to study, says computer science student Janne Laukkanen.

He recently returned from a study-related field trip to San Francisco.

By providing working-life connections through education and research, the Department of Computer Science offers one answer to the question. And its newest means to connect started in 2010 with Software Factory, which has now networked both within Finland and across the globe.

Software Factory's newest collaboration centers on Open Source, and launched with a Hackathon event at Facebook's San Francisco campus in late January. More than 150 students from around 10 universities participated.

– With collaborators from Stanford University, MIT, University of Tokyo, National University of Singapore, and other universities in China, USA, Canada, and Europe, our students are in good company and the experience is unique, says laboratory operational coordinator Fabian Fagerholm.

Working online, student teams participate in development efforts like the well-known Ruby on Rails application framework and the Kotlin programming language compiler project.

– Especially this close collaboration with top developers from the Open Source world is hard to get elsewhere. Many of these developers are legends in their own communities. During our trip, we worked hand in hand under their instruction, says student Olli Rissanen.

University-level theory and relevant practice through international collaboration

The idea of Open Source projects is to offer students a unique learning experience, and also to try out new teaching methods.

Department Head of Studies Jaakko Kurhila is enthusiastic:

– More of this is needed all the time. Students who want something extra in their degree, and are willing to put in the work, will benefit from this tremendously.

– Students learn teamwork and skills that are difficult to convey in traditional lectures. Software Factory is also an excellent environment for conducting empirical research, says FiDiPro professor Jürgen Münch, who leads the Software Systems Engineering Research Group at the University of Helsinki.

The Open Source endeavor ends in June 2013. After that, participating universities will use the experience in developing their own computer science education.

Software Factory

Software Systems Engineering Research Group

Committed blog

Course description: Software Factory Project

Text: Minna Meriläinen-Tenhu
31.1.2013

Created date

01.02.2013 - 12:55

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.