Tervetuloa Tietotekniikan yksikön blogiin. Olemme Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunnan monitieteinen osaamiskeskittymä, jonka tutkimus- ja opetusalueet kattavat laajasti ICT-aluetta.
Welcome to the blog of the Computing Sciences unit. We are a multidisciplinary hub for research, teaching and learning across a wide range of topics in ICT.
The university campuses closing created a rapid need to move all teaching to be provided through web based means. Together with the rest of Tampere University, Computing Sciences answered the call. Even though many courses were already using lecture recordings, online learning platforms and other online tools, this was a giant leap in digitalising our teaching.
It's my pleasure to welcome four new (or recent) researchers to the Network and Information Security group (NISEC)! As their supervisor, as they introduce themselves in this post I'm left pondering what I can contribute to the working life of these young, talented scholars. Since we now total five native Spanish speakers in NISEC, I reckon I need to dust off my high school Spanish from the Texas border. "Donde esta la biblioteca?" "Como llegar a la frontera?" "Yo quiero Taco Bell!" It's a start, but I need to find the accent characters and recall how to make upside down question marks and exclamation points. Bienvenidos!
On Thursday the 5th of March, about 30 elementary school pupils from Nokia Kankaantaka school visited Tampere University Hervanta campus to get familiar with social robots. The robots were Pepper the humanoid robot, Elias the NAO robot, the telepresence robot, and Cozmo, which we facilitated. The pupils from 4th to 6th grades and two teachers were very excited to get to know the robots after a 45-minute bus ride to Tampere. It seemed that most of them didn’t have previous experience in interacting with robots. After the introductions, the pupils were divided into groups and it was time to start the phase that everyone was probably looking for. Groups rotated from robot to robot, and each group had around 10 minutes to meet each of them. Although the time was limited, it was enough to demonstrate a few features, let the pupils participate and keep them engaged and interested.
As part of the ongoing trend to give less traditional lecturing and more interactive teaching, we decided to start flipping the Digital Design course. We made the decision near the beginning of the course last fall, so there was only time to record teaching videos for the course. A proper flipped course would also have small group teaching with discussions about the videos with small exercises, but those will have to wait until next fall. In this post, I will share some experiences about the video making process.
On the 18th of February 2020, students from Cross-Cultural Design course belonging to Human-Technology Interaction study programme gathered around to celebrate the last day of the course by presenting their cross-cultural re-design projects on different social media websites. It was interesting to know that in a class with twenty students, there were eleven national cultures from around world.
In the 70’s and 80’s a consensus emerged among the practitioners and researchers in organizations that were utilizing the new and exciting computer technology in their operations. Computer scientists, engineers and cognitive psychologists jointly came to the conclusion that there was a problem in the way that computers and software user interfaces were designed. People resisted re-training to follow the software designer’s ideas of how they should do their work. In some cases computer systems intended to make the organization work more efficiently were found to do the opposite. In other cases users found creative ways to misuse the systems when they did not understand how to accomplish their daily tasks with the new technology.
Kesätyöpaikkoja matematiikan opiskelijoille sekä englannin kielen opiskelijalle!
In this project of User Experience in Robotics course we worked in conjunction with the Tampere University's childrens and youth STEM unit Juniversity (Part of the finnish national LUMA network) to create a robotic application to support their "Science Stop" ("Tiedepysäkki") events. Read here our story of our robotic concept about Pepper as an interactive tour guide to the solar system.
Computing Sciences celebrates its first full year in the new Tampere University. Year 2019 was but construction work also continuation of excellent research and teaching thanks to our noted research groups and professional teachers. All of our 450 staff members wish the readers wonderful year 2020 and look forward to get in touch with you in face-to-face or social media!
