Latest in Comments on Science and Academia
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Announcing open course “Free/Libre and Open-Source Software”
Free/Libre and Open-Source Software (FOSS) teaches principles, practices, and economic underpinnings of free/libre and open source software. The following materials are available: All materials are in English. The course materials (slides, videos) are available under the CC-BY 4.0 license. This means you can use my materials, remix them, and share them. You don’t have to…
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Announcing open course “Agile Methods and Open Source”
Agile Methods and Open Source (AMOS) teaches agile methods in a university context using semester-long projects. The class sessions of 90 min. each cover half a semester to leave room for guest speakers. The following materials are available: All materials are in English. You can get an idea about this favorite course of mine using…
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Announcing open course “Advanced Design and Programming”
Advanced Design and Programming (ADAP) teaches principles and practices of advanced object-oriented design and programming using a semester-long project. The following materials are available: The spoken language in the videos is German, everything else is in English. The course materials (slides, videos) are available under the CC-BY 4.0 license. This means you can use my…
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Why informatics is everyone’s business in academia
Informatics (worse: Computing science; even worse: Computer science) is the discipline of automated data processing (where automation is both human independent and dependent, and data in context becomes information). The non-IT industry has learned the hard way over the last few decades that informatics is part of their core business, not just some support function.…
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What is meant by “teaching fundamentals”?
In my previous post I noted how students and professors are often talking past each other, where some the former want to learn immediately applicable knowledge and the latter want to teach long-lasting fundamentals. I also noted that there is no contradiction here, which begs the question what professors mean when the say they want…
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The place of professional certificates and the significance of an academic degree
My Twitter feed is alight with comments on Google’s six-month “career” certificate, which, according to this SVP, Google will treat as equivalent to a four-year Bachelor’s degree. Predictably, a large number of comments are from students who conclude from their own disappointed experience that all college programs are crap. They cheer on Google. Also predictably,…