From 1993 till 1996 the Institute of Cybernetics is participated in Tempus Structural JEP 06145 as result of which on January 31, 1995 CIDEC was established comprising three institutions in Estonia (Univ. of Tartu, Tallinn Technical Univ. and the IoC). The European partners in the project were Aarhus University (Denmark), University of Saarlandes (Germany), University of Nice (France), and Technical University of Eindhoven (The Netherlands).
The CIDEC i.e. Information Technology and Computer Science Education Development Center for Estonian Universities (in Estonian - Ülikoolide Informaatikakeskus, see also URL:
http://grata.cs.ioc.ee/yik/yik.htm) was founded on January 31st, 1995 as a soft organisation, actually an agreement drawn between Tallinn Technical University, University of Tartu and Institute of Cybernetics to join forces and funds to develop and co-ordinate higher education and research activities in Computer Science and Information Technology. CIDEC was formed as an independent part of the IOC.
To develop general policy of the Center and supervise its maintenance the CIDEC has the steering committee with representatives from all participating institutions - Prof. Jüri Kiho and dr. Merik Meriste from Tartu University, Prof.-s Leo Võhandu and Vello Kukk from Tallinn Technical University, Prof. Jaan Penjam and dr. Ahto Kalja from the Institute of Cybernetics.
Dr. Jüri Vain has been elected by the steering committee to fill the position of the executive director of CIDEC. Other staff of CIDEC includes an administrator - Monika Perkmann, and representatives of the CIDEC at universities: dr. Jaanus Pöial at Tartu University, Andres Rähni at Tallinn Technical University and Rein Lõugas at the Institute of Cybernetics.
The main goal of CIDEC is to integrate the teaching system of Estonian universities into the framework accepted in EC countries and to join people of different organisations interested in the subject.
To do that in the CIDECs statute the following tasks have been set:
In 1996 CIDEC personnel has become stable, its structure affirmed. Due to TEMPUS support CIDEC has established substantial modern computer classrooms both in Tallinn and Tartu and a library of the most recent CS & IT literature. CIDEC people have gained management experience, introduced new forms of activities e.g. "schools". CIDEC has initiated several projects to get additional financing for its activities. CIDEC has been planning its future, taken dissemination measures, specified its relations with other institutions.
Upgrading facilities. To fulfil the task to provide teaching materials and modern well-equipped laboratories for research and teaching at graduate and post-graduate level CIDEC has in its possession computer classrooms and libraries - resp. at TTU and at TU - both used for regular CS & IT courses and for student research projects. In 1996 the computer classrooms received equipment (computers, software, maintenance etc.) altogether for about 90,000.00 ECU from TEMPUS funding. In addition to modern computing facilities a LEGO Laboratory equipment to accompany course "Computer Control" was installed.
In addition in 1996 the CIDEC library a in Tallinn and Tartu received books for about 11,000.00 ECU. Books were selected following the principle to have large variety of books trying to cover as many CS & IT areas as possible and have one book in Tallinn and one in Tartu, at least for subjects taught there (some books were of interest only to one of the universities). Also recommendations of project partners and visiting lecturers were considered. The list of books purchased for CIDEC library under Tempus JEP 6145 is available on WWW - http://greta.cs.ioc.ee/yik/reports/finrep96/rep96a2.html (books bought/ordered in 1996 are marked with *). The CIDEC library WWW pages are under construction and not yet publicly available.
Guest lecturers. In 1996 there have been the following guest lecturers within the framework of TEMPUS JEP-06145:
Schools. In 1996 CIDEC organised (helped to organise) several schools.
On Mar 3-Mar 8, 1996 a Winter School "New Trends in Computer Science and Information Technology" was held at Pühajärve with the following invited lecturers:
At this school also a contest of student presentations was held.
CIDEC was one organiser of Nordic-Baltic Summer School held in TTU on June 10-15, 1996 (URL: http://greta.cs.ioc.ee/~nordbalt/) and of "Second International Baltic Workshop on DB and IS" held in IoC, EE on June 12-14, 1996 (URL: http://greta.cs.ioc.ee/~balt96/).
Development of courses and teaching materials. Several mobility flows from East to West were planned to prepare or refresh different courses. Among others from IoC Ahto Kalja visited Århus University and updated his course LDX 4800 "Software Engineering" (64 hours) in TTU.
Student mobility. In 1996 five students (TU, TTU) took either a 3 month study period or a practical placement at Tempus JEP European partners.
Other events in 1996. To plan its future and receive additional support for its activities CIDEC has initiated and/or participated in the following projects:
CIDEC has established Baltic West European contact network for regional activities for higher education in CS & IT involving partners from several Estonian and Baltic JEPs that operate in CS & IT context e.g JEP-6032 and JEP-9752 in Lithuania and JEP-7256 in Estonia. An expert exchange system has been put up among JEPs, (management) experience dissemination schema has been developed. Cooperation between JEPs helps to spread information about universities involved, provides good basis to initiate new projects.
Within the framework of co-operation with a Lithuanian TEMPUS S_JEP-06032 "Modularization and Modernization of curricula for teaching advanced Information Technology in Lithuania"
(see http://www.soften.ktu.lt/jep-06032/city/06032.html):
On June 14-15, 1996 CIDEC organised a Second Tempus Workshop on Informatics Education in the Baltics (for more information see URL: http://greta.cs.ioc.ee/yik/bws/bws.html). The aim of the workshop was to inform each other about the progress of "old" projects as well as new initiatives, to make plans for the dissemination of results of the TEMPUS projects in computing related fields, and to prepare responses to the next TEMPUS call. The following Tempus projects were represented: JEP-06145, JEP-06032, JEP-09752, CME-01011 "A Graduate School in IT and CS in Estonia", JEP-07256. All participants were asked to submit materials about their talks electronically, as much as received can be viewed at URL: http://greta.cs.ioc.ee/yik/bws/bwsproc.html.
CIDEC investigated the possibility to grow into a graduate school, which would offer a program for gaining the Doctoral (Ph.D.) degree in Computer Science. It was done within the framework of Tempus complementary measures project titled: "A Graduate School in Information Technology and Computer Science in Estonia: Feasibility Study" (CME-01011-95). This project lasted from Oct. 1st 1995 till Sep. 30th 1996. The following partners were involved: CIDEC (the Coordinator, responsible person Jaanus Pöial), Turku Centre for Computer Science in the University of Turku (the Contractor), Tampere University of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), University of Tartu, and Tallinn Technical University.
Within the framework of this project three seminars took place in Estonia:
The following workshops were held to make the know-how of the partner institutions available to for the academic staff from Estonia:
Four expert groups were organised to cover different topics of the study:
CIDEC held on an inquiry (resp. Jüri Vain) for Estonian companies, state institutions, universities, etc. to investigate their needs related to IT and CS education.
Conclusions from the inquiry: Most Estonian IT companies and organisations are relatively new (1-5 years) and in the present very dynamic market situation their efforts are mainly concentrated on arranging and stabilising business activities and structures. Only the biggest or very narrowly specialised companies have resources for strategic development (with appropriate research). For that reason only 12% of the companies claimed the need for graduated people. Still, in the long run, the need for graduates has a tendency to grow as international experiences show us. Several companies involved or switching into international projects are planning to hire part- or full-time employees with master or doctoral degrees for research consuming projects. Results of the questionnaire reflect often attitudes of the administrative managers instead of those who are primarily responsible for the development work and staff retraining at the company (if these positions exist in the company). Individual aspects - the opinion of potential graduate students - are missing in the present questionnaire.
Sometimes the results of the questionnaire seem to depend on the interviewer and his (her) ability to explain the idea of a graduate school. Still, in a sufficiently large set of answers, these deviations can be ignored. Subjectivism of estimates plays a more important role in academic and state organisations where the number of answers is remarkably smaller than that in businesses.
In general, employers perceive the need to improve the level of IT education of their staff. Willingness to co-operate with the GS is sufficient considering present economic and political conditions (more than 70% expressed their readiness to co-operate in some form).
The Graduate School project material is available at URL: http://www.cs.ut.ee/ jaanus/cme. In the final report if this project also the topics "Current State of Postgraduate Education in IT and CS" and "Implementation of a Graduate School" are covered.
Project overview was published in Estonian journal "A&A" (Arvutustehnika ja Andmetöötlus) (ISSN 0234-064x), No 4, 1996, p. 38-44: J. Pöial, Problems of Graduate Studies in Computer Science and Information Technology (in Estonian) and in Information Journal of University of Turku (Yliopistotiedot), vol. 35, No 13, p. 11 - 12: T. Järvi, Information Technology Graduate School in Estonia? - Experiences from a Tempus-project (in Finnish).
Estonian Ministry of Education has been informed about the progress of the project. Representative of the ministry was involved in the project seminar in Tartu. Summaries of conclusions from the project events were sent to the ministry.
This project has induced related activities, targeted to improve the situation in IT and CS education, e.g. ideas about connecting postgraduate studies to the Centre of Intellectual and Technological Competence for Information Society (CITCIS) and a new CME-project for quality assurance system for informatics education.