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

Discovering Computational Creativity at the University of Helsinki

Computational creativity is a relatively new field among computational sciences, but it already has an active international community of academic researchers. A part of this international community is the Discovery Research Group, run by professor Hannu Toivonen at the University of Helsinki. The group is interested especially in linguistic creativity methods, including methods for the generation of poetry, word associations, humour, and text summarisation. But the group’s efforts have also included musical composition, a human-computer co-creation study and on-going work in pictorial metaphors.

Free-Form Gestures for Mobile Authentication

In the third research result of the month we report on the recent results in gesture-based authentication of users on mobile devices. We interview Assistant Professor Teemu Roos regarding the recent accepted scientific article in the top-tier ACM MobiSys 2014 conference.

 

Strategy seminar of the Department 2014

The strategy seminar for the Department of Computer Science was arranged at the Kisakallio sports institute in Lohja on 26-27 May 2014. In addition to the strategy work, the programme included meals and coffees, sports, and sauna baths. The high winds blew frisbees and canoes into the bushes. However, the water in Lake Lohjanjärvi was warm, some 20 degrees according to the skin thermometer.

Professor Maxime Crochemore conferred Doctor Honoris Causa

Professor Maxime Crochemore received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Helsinki in a conferment ceremony of the Faculty of Philosophy in 23 May 2014.