News

Passing the Course and Grading

Written on 30.01.23 by Sven Rahmann

Dear all,

we have received a number of requests concerning grading. We realize that the first quizzes have been too hard for what is intended for this course. We therefore decided on a number of measures.

  • Lowering the passing requirement to 50% of the total points (25% for those study… Read more

Dear all,

we have received a number of requests concerning grading. We realize that the first quizzes have been too hard for what is intended for this course. We therefore decided on a number of measures.

  • Lowering the passing requirement to 50% of the total points (25% for those study programs where this is a 1 ECTS course).
  • Taking single questions out of the requirement that almost no one got correctly (with agreement of the instructor).

However, please be aware that there are still quizzes this week and next week, and that both quizzes fully count towards the required points. 

Happy Holidays!

Written on 23.12.22 by Sven Rahmann

Dear all,

the whole team wishes you a happy and relaxing holiday season. We understood your feedback from the last lecture quiz that it was too hard again. Unfortunately, we do not know lecture contents in advance and the quizzes usually not too far in advance, so we typically cannot test them. We… Read more

Dear all,

the whole team wishes you a happy and relaxing holiday season. We understood your feedback from the last lecture quiz that it was too hard again. Unfortunately, we do not know lecture contents in advance and the quizzes usually not too far in advance, so we typically cannot test them. We have re-emphasized again to all lecturers that the quizzes should be very much on the easy side. We will take the holidays to prepare some statistics and use the first week of January (when there is no lecture on Monday 02.01.) to present them here in the CMS.

Enjoy your free time!

 

Feedback on Your Feedback

Written on 07.12.22 (last change on 07.12.22) by Sven Rahmann

Dear all,

we have received quite some feedback from some of you, which can be (very briefly) summarized as follows.

  1. You like the general idea of this lecture series, i.e. being introduced to a variety of topics.
  2. Most of the lectures so far are to specialized, to deep, and/or require… Read more

Dear all,

we have received quite some feedback from some of you, which can be (very briefly) summarized as follows.

  1. You like the general idea of this lecture series, i.e. being introduced to a variety of topics.
  2. Most of the lectures so far are to specialized, to deep, and/or require knowledge that you do not have yet.
  3. Given 2., the quizzes are (much) too hard; the questions sometimes tricky or vague
  4. There is a high level of anxiety that you may not pass

Please let me explain first how it should actually work and have worked.

  1. Indeed, the intention of the series is to give an overview of the possibilities that exist at Saarland Informatics Campus.
  2. Each lecture should present a topic in breadth, not in depth, and be accessible without prior knowledge (except general Abitur or equivalent).
  3. The quizzes should be easy. In fact, if you pay attention, it should be easy to get 100%. We want you to listen to the lectures, get an overview of our research topics, not over-analyze each single question. There should be no trick questions.
  4. The quizzes are there because we have to have a certain kind of "exam". We want to verify that you listen and get the "take-home messages". We also want you to think a little bit about the contents. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to read and grade 300+ summaries of each lecture. Therefore, we decided on a system that grades more or less automatically. We want everyone who takes it seriously to pass this lecture series without investing a lot of time.

To explain this a bit further in view of the CP system: Every CP should translate roughly to 30 hours of work. In this case, you have to listen to a 2h lecture every week (actually, 90 min or less, but this counts as 2h); so this is already 1 CP just for "viewing". The second CP is for whatever else you have to do: watch the video (or parts) a second time, review the slides, think about it, look up some information on the web, do the quiz.

And to be honest, if there is one lecture that is too specialized, we are not worried. This is why we don't demand 90% but "only" 60% (again, it should be relatively easy to get close to 100%). However, in this semester, it seems that most of the lectures so far didn't reach the overall goal that we have for this series.

So what have we done? We have just reminded everyone (all PIs at Saarland Informatics Campus) about the idea of this series. In particular, we have asked everyone to give basic lectures and ask simple quiz questions focusing on the major take-home messages. Please continue to give feedback so we can see if the situation improves. If necessary, we will dynamically adjust the scoring of the previous lectures (after doing some more statistical analysis). In the meantime, we would like to ask you to focus on the contents of the lectures, not on the mechanics of the quizzes.

Lecture recording available

Written on 29.11.22 by Sven Rahmann

The lecture recording of Prof. Maggio is now online (link: Information > Materials). The quiz is open till Wednesday 23:59.

Lecture recording and slides available; relaxed quiz rules

Written on 21.11.22 by Sven Rahmann

The lecture recording of Prof. Weber is now online (link: Information > Materials). The quiz is open till Wednesday 23:59. Note that there is a time limit of 120 min for the quiz and there is only a single attempt. Once you start, the clock is ticking.

As you can see, we have made it a bit… Read more

The lecture recording of Prof. Weber is now online (link: Information > Materials). The quiz is open till Wednesday 23:59. Note that there is a time limit of 120 min for the quiz and there is only a single attempt. Once you start, the clock is ticking.

As you can see, we have made it a bit easier:

  • The quiz can be taken till WEDNESDAY evening (instead of Tuesday).
  • The time limit is now 120 min (instead of 35)

These changes were made in response to a comment that pointed out at the lectures were, partially, not very basic, and the quiz questions hard to answer.

 

Important Note for LL.M Students

Written on 10.11.22 by Sven Rahmann

LL.M. students cannot register in LSF, HIS/POS. It is sufficient to be registered here (in the CMS) and achieve 30% of the points for 1 ECTS credit. You will get a written confirmation if you pass the course to hand over to your examination office.

(I thought I said this in the first lecture, but… Read more

LL.M. students cannot register in LSF, HIS/POS. It is sufficient to be registered here (in the CMS) and achieve 30% of the points for 1 ECTS credit. You will get a written confirmation if you pass the course to hand over to your examination office.

(I thought I said this in the first lecture, but apparently there is much confusion about it.)

Registration in HISPOS/LSF

Written on 03.11.22 (last change on 12.11.22) by Nadine Wilhelm

Dear students,

registration in HISPOS/LSF will be open from calendar week 45.
Please choose exam number 10036 in "Prüfungsstrukturbaum" -> "Informatik" -> "Bachelor" -> "Lecture Series on Topics in Computer Science".
(This does not apply to LL.M students, who cannot register in HISPOS/LSF. They… Read more

Dear students,

registration in HISPOS/LSF will be open from calendar week 45.
Please choose exam number 10036 in "Prüfungsstrukturbaum" -> "Informatik" -> "Bachelor" -> "Lecture Series on Topics in Computer Science".
(This does not apply to LL.M students, who cannot register in HISPOS/LSF. They will receive a written confirmation letter at the end of the course.)

Show all

Perspectives of Computer Science

Lectures: Different PIs of Saarland Informatics Campus present various research topics in computer science (in English).

Organisation: Prof. Dr. Sven Rahmann

Time: Every Monday, starting 31.10.2022, at 14:15 - 15:45

Location: online lecture on zoom (link: see Materials after registration here in the CMS).
The zoom room supports at most 300 people. If it is full, do not worry.
The lectures will be recorded and made available in "Information -> Materials".

Prerequisites: none; the lecture is for beginning students in computer science.

Passing the course:

  • This is a mandatory but ungraded course for 2 ECTS credits.
  • After every lecture, there will be an online quiz that must be taken by each student. A certain number of correct answers (60%) must be given in the quizzes to pass the course. (Students whose study plan counts this course with only 1 ECTS credit need to get half of that, i.e. 30%).
  • The quizzes are in Moodle. You must register for the course in Moodle.
  • Quizzes consist of multiple-choice questions.
  • Quizzes are open till Wednesday after the lecture, 23:59. Results will be available after the quiz closes.
  • There is a single attempt for each quiz! Do not waste it. You need to confirm final submission of answers & re-confirm.
  • There is a time limit of 120 min for each quiz once you start it. You should have completely understood and processed the lecture before you start the quiz!
  • In contrast to previous version of this lecture, no summaries have to be written or handed in.

Important registration information:

  • You must register for this course on this website (CMS) in order to access the recorded lectures and other material.
  • You must register for the course in Moodle using your UdS account (new ones are like albe001@... for Alice Bertholdy, for example) in order to take each quiz. You will pass the course if and only if you get >= 60% of all quiz questions (over the whole course) entirely correct.
  • You must register this course separately in HIS/POS (LSF) until 30.11.2022; otherwise you cannot get credit. No exceptions; no late registrations. If you forget the HIS/POS registration, you cannot get credit even if you get 60% of all quiz points!
    (Note: LL.M. students cannot register in LSF, HIS/POS. It is sufficient to be registered here (in the CMS) and achieve 30% of the points for 1 ECTS credit. You will get a written confirmation if you pass the course to hand over to your examination office)

Questions?  

  • Please read the FAQ below first, then use the "Forum".
  • To connect with each other, we may also set up a discord server for everyone. However, it will not be monitored by the organization team.

 

Schedule

Date Topic
31.10.2022 Sven Rahmann: Introduction and Organization
07.11.2022 Christoph Sorge: "Applied Privacy Engineering: An interdisciplinary Perspective"
14.11.2022 Mariya Toneva: "Bridging Language in Machines with Language in the Brain"
21.11.2022 Ingmar Weber: “Societal Computing”
28.11.2022 Martina Maggio: "Control Systems Fault Tolerance in the Presence of Computational Problems"
05.12.2022 Jan Reineke: “Code that never ran”
12.12.2022 Tomo Nagashima: “Understanding and Supporting Human Learning with Adaptive Learning Technologies"
19.12.2022 Verena Wolf: "Modeling the spread of COVID-19: Lessons learned"
(holidays)  ---
02.01.2023  --- (no lecture on 02.01.)
09.01.2023 Joachim Weickert: "Diffusion, Image Processing and Computer Vision"
16.01.2023 Thorsten Herfet: "Imaging beyond photography -- Adaptive processing and Classification of Light Fields"
23.01.2023 Benjamin Kaminski: „Ancient and Modern (Quantitative) Verification“
30.01.2023 Philipp Slusallek: "Digital Reality: From Learned Models via Synthetic Data to Trusted-AI — and Back!"
06.02.2023 Andrea Volkamer: "Data Driven Drug Design: Structural Bioinformatics and Cheminformatics Approaches"

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

  • How do I register in LSF / HISPOS ?

    Registration opened in calendar week 45 and has to be completed till 30.11.2022 !
    Please choose exam number 10036 in "Prüfungsstrukturbaum" -> "Informatik" -> "Bachelor" -> "Lecture Series on Topics in Computer Science". (This does not apply to LL.M students, who cannot register in HISPOS/LSF. They will receive a written confirmation letter at the end of the course.)

  • I forgot to finish a quiz in time. Can I do a late submission?
    No; you'll get 0 points for this quiz. Don´t worry, you only need 60%, so it's enough to make sure you do well in the following weeks.

  • I started the quiz, then time ran out, and I never submitted. What now?
    The questions that you have answered within the time frame will be graded; the remainder will be scored with zero.

Earlier versions of "Perspektiven der Informatik"

 

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