Improvement of Teaching for Courses “Programming Languages” And “Operating systems” Project head: prof. dr Zoran Budimac Members: prof. dr Mirjana Ivanović mr Dragoslav Pešović Nataša Ibrajter

Adoption of the new curricula Two years ago, a new curricula has been adopted for the most of the educational profiles at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Those new curricule give an excellent infrastructure for the future changes and reformations. Most of the courses are one semester, student projects are introduced, and so are the elective courses for the students of the III and IV year, but also for one subject at the first year.

New curricula – Overview: InformaticsBusiness inform. Total lecture hours209 Informatics48.32%49.28% Mathematics11.96%9.09% General3.34% Foundations of informatics 16.26%13.39% Hardware4.78%1.91% Computational science 15.31%22.96%

InformaticsBusiness informatics 209 Elective15.78%14.35% Obligatory84.22%85.65% New curricula – relationship between obligatory and elective courses

Financing of education improvement Improvement of lectures is partially supported by the Ministry of Education of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. Professors and assistents are improving education as a part of their regular duties. Support is requested by different foreign institutions (a new DAAD project, with the aim of creation of common teaching material for teaching “Programming languages” for several Universities in the region, and in Germany).

Current state of the project - course “Programming languages” For a course „Programming languages“, transfer of teaching material into the Power Point presentations has began, thus introducing the more modern method of teaching. For reviewing knowledge for “Programming languages”, official Java certificates are used. For all of the subjects mentioned in this presentation, exams are practical+oral, and student work is followed throughout the year through practical tasks.

Current state of the project - course “Operating systems” Two-semester course “Operating systems” has been replaces by two one-semester courses “Operating systems I” and “Operating systems II”, where the second one is elective. Transfer of teaching material for the course “Operating systems II” from the programming language Modula-2 to programming language Java, has begun.

Attendance of the laboratory practices – for “Prog. Lang”, the old and the new curricula

Chart of attendance of the laboratory practices – the old curriculum

Chart of attendance of the laboratory practices – the new curriculum

Current state of the project – the both courses Basis for the oral exam is a test, with 15 (respectively 16) precise questions, thus enabling much better knowledge evaluation than the classic method of exam. At the end of the course, students are given an anonymous questionnaire, which creates a survey about the quality of both the course and the lecturer.

A survey of students attending the course “Operating systems I” Gave the following results: Attendance of lectures is around 90%, laboratory practices around 80%, Practical exam is marked by the highest offered mark 5 (marks were from 1 to 5), by ALL students. Oral exam organized in a way of test, acquired a mark 2.22, 50% students thinks that the oral exam organized in a way of test is a better method for knowledge testing than the classic oral exam.

Real needs of a project We are very thankful to the Ministry of Education of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina for the support provided. While emphasising that this is THE ONLY support gained from the government, we must stress that financing was insufficient. Real needs assume additional information technology, literature, and software. We hope for the greater support from official domestic institutions, enabling us to teach better and educate students capable of competing with their other european colleagues.