2009-03-27 - Joint Teaching and Learning at Top European Research Level

Within the European Network-of-Excellence (NoE) CONTENT a joint international course for graduate students has been running for several years. The concept of this course is very innovative since it is not only based on frequent exchange of lecturers but also leverages the opportunities recorded and fully synchronized lectures offer as they have a 24/7 availability over the Internet. Another cornerstone of this joint course are joint six-week long lab assignments. Students from the University of Oslo (NO), Lancaster University (UK), Technical University of Darmstadt (DE) and Helsinki University of Technology (FIN) are encouraged to collaborate together in intensive lab assignments to fulfill the mandatory requirements for this joint course. The joint course is embedded in each Universities curriculum, see for example:

- INF5090 at the University of Oslo

- T-110.6120 at Helsinki University of Technology

- CS at Lancaster University

Course objectives and structure

The basic goal of the course is to describe recent challenges in networks and distributed systems that arise through increasing dynamics caused through mobility, partially availability of nodes, disrupted networks etc. and how these challenges are addressed. This includes also a systematic study of how these new solutions are evaluated.

All lectures are close to the recent research topics that are addressed in the different research teams that teach the course. An overview on the particular lectures given for example at the University of Oslo can be found here. In addition to lectures it is important to also gain knowledge through practical lab assignment. Finally, we emphasis on the personal contact of students with teachers from the other Universities.

Multimedia support

All lectures are recorded with LECTURNITY (www.lecturnity.de). Before the lecture the powerpoint document to be used is imported into LECTURNITY. A digital camera and a wireless microphone are connect to a Tablet PC that is used by the teacher for the presentation. The teachers does not only present the transparencies, but makes also annotations and drawings etc. on the transparencies. Audio, video, and all the interaction with the transparencies are fully synchronized recorded.

The recordings are placed onto a server at the Technical University of Darmstadt. All recordings from all years are online available for all students that take the course and all PhD students that are associated to the NoE CONTENT.