OREANDA-NEWS. April 20, 2016. At the conference “Fibre Optic Education”, organised by the Information Technology Foundation for Education last week, the University of Tartu Institute of Computer Science’s MOOC “About Programming” was awarded the title for the best e-course of the year. This course is also among the 31 which received the e-course quality mark this year.

Eno T?nisson, UT Lecturer in Informatics, who runs the programming course, said that in addition to high-level research and teaching students, UT Institute of Computer Science considers it important to offer learning options to the general public.

“E-courses in Estonian are a flexible means of self-education to people of different ages everywhere in Estonia and elsewhere. Frequent coverage of IT related topics in media increases interest in programming, which many people have not had direct contact with,” said T?nisson.

This year, five e-courses which received the e-course quality mark in the 2016 application round were nominated for the “e-Course of the Year” title. In addition to the UT MOOC, courses from the Estonian Aviation Academy, the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tallinn University of Technology and Tartu Health Care College were also nominated.

“Other nominees also had great courses. But this time our course was considered worthy of the title “e-Course of the Year”,” rejoiced T?nisson. The evaluation team, comprised of e-learning experts, acknowledged the programming course for its high level automatic and personal feedback. They also highlighted using real life examples and good-hearted humour.

The e-course “About Programming” has taken place four times by now. Altogether, about 3,600 people have registered for the courses and about 2,400 have completed it. Currently, a more extensive e-course called “Introduction to Programming” is running with 1,775 participants.

The organisational team of the course includes, in addition to Tunisson, Lecturer in Informatics Marina Lepp, Assistants in Didactics of Informatics Tauno Palts and Reelika Suviste and current or recent students Vello Vaherpuu, Kaspar Papli, Hanna-Liisa Reponen, Kaspar Hollo, Mari-Liis Jaansalu and Merilin Side. Later Kristine Leetberg, Kadi R?mmel, Helena Talimaa and Mari Liis Velner have also joined. Many others have contributed.

Since 2009, UT has received the title “e-Course of the Year” three times.