Kémiai kutatás, oktatás, ismeretterjesztés fóruma

["LORINCZ, Andras" <alorincz AT axelero.hu>]

SoftWare for CourseWare
Research and development
http://people.inf.elte.hu/lorincz/CourseWare_SW.html


Rationale:
Given the recent increase in the number of university students, the level of 
education is low for the top 10%. By top 10% I mean those, who could proceed 
faster given

their drive for learning,
intelligence in evaluating their knowledge,
pin-pointing to missing areas of university training
willing to study Internet courses with/without supervisory help
willing to evaluate courses

To make things happen a novel software tool is under development at the 
Neural Information Processing Group of the Eötvös Loránd University. This 
software tool allows to organize, evaluate and link the university curriculum 
(oktatási háló) into map form. The goal of the SW is to enable -- beyond 
other forms -- signed anonymous evaluation of the courses, the evaluation of 
evaluations, the derivation of expert factors (alike to impact factors of 
journals) and the automated selection of the best
experts.

Motivation and experiences:

According to my own experiences, the only choice for the best students at 
this moment is to work for two university grades simultaneously. For example: 
phyiscs and software engineering, electronic engineering and mathematics, 
economy and applied mathematics. The goal of the present development is to 
enable the best students to finish one grade and to get started in their PhD 
studies at an early stage in the field computer curriculum, including 
computer science, information systems, and software
engineering.

Good timing:


There are new developments under way. For example, MIT is organizing its Open 
CourseWare (MIT OpenCW), which will be (has been) put onto the Internet in 
September 2002. There are allied forces at different American and European 
universities. For our own purposes it is us, who should collect the 
experiences about these materials,

whether those are useful for us,
which one needs supervisory help,
how to include those into the curriculum of our university,
how to extend those with courses of Hungarian universities, within or outside 
of Hungary.
find courses at Hungarian universities, which complement present curricula of 
Hungarian universities.
find courses at non-Hungarian universities, which complement present 
curricula of Hungarian universities.
Other reasons why timing is good:

Internet technology allows anonymous publications,
security, authentication and accountibility can be ensured,
map viewers have become available.
The last group of reasons for making this effort:

Computer curriculum is evolving fast than committees are working. The 
development of a new curriculum takes two years and it is obsolete at the 
time of publishing, according to ACM and IEEE.
Training of teachers of computer science and information systems is such that 
the knowledge of the university graduates may be obsolete at the time of 
graduation. Continuing learning seems a must here.
Single curriculum may not work. Needs are different for different 
communities, subpopulations and student groups.
It can be questioned if the needs of different groups could be satisfied 
without the active participation of members of those groups. The Internet and 
the CourseWare provides a forum/means/tool to catalyze data collection, to 
promote interaction and to cuimulate knowledge.
Please, send an email, if you are interested in taking part in this project
E-mail: 
lorincz AT inf.elte.hu
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