TU Eindhoven Visit

Today I’m on a visit (with several other members of staff from the School of Computer Science and Informatics) to TU Eindhoven, being hosted by the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences. We’re here to talk about both teaching and research mostly on a fact-finding basis, but also with an eye towards potential future collaborations and links between the two institutions.

It’s always fascinating to visit other academic institutions, particularly in other countries. In the first instance, seeing the differences in the way they do things can be very eye-opening and lead to some interesting ideas that can hopefully bring about substantive and useful changes back home. Secondly, it is also kind of reassuring to see that there are similarities in the problems they face, and that some of the questions they are wrestling with internally are very similar to the questions we spend time discussing.

On the teaching side of things, we’ve been learning about their extensive use of problem-based learning, their cross-curricular project space, and their vision for what education at TUE will look like in 10 years time. We’ve learnt a lot, and it’s really spurred us on to think about the long-term plans for education in the School - where do we want to be in 10 years, and what will CS education look like then?

Our next step is to try and figure out the answer to that question…