At University of Iceland, all are equal, but some are more equal. So much more equal that they think rules do not apply for them. Last week, Siðfræðistofnun HÍ, the Centre for Ethics at the University of Iceland, was using for some event the teaching room GR-321 Ada (named after Ada Lovelace) at the Computer Science department in the Gróska building. The rules for using teaching rooms are common-sense and pretty simple (English translations added by me):

• 1. gr. Almennt

  Skylt er að ganga vel um húsakynni Háskóla Íslands, umhverfi hans, tæki og búnað á hverjum stað. Enginn má skilja eftir sig rusl, hvorki innan dyra né utan. Notum ruslafötur!

  Deal well with the premises and equipment. No one may leave trash behind. We use trash cans!

• 2. gr. Tillitssemi

  Hverjum og einum ber að sýna tillitssemi og valda ekki öðrum truflun eða óþægindum.

  Everyone is responsible to show consideration and does not disturb others or cause inconvenience.

• 5. gr. Neysla matar

  Neysla matar er óheimil í kennslustofum og tölvuverum.
  

  Consuming food is forbidden in teaching rooms and computer rooms.

• 8. gr. Brot á húsreglum

  Brot á húsreglum, tjón og hvers konar spjöll geta leitt til bótaskyldu og/eða brottvísunar.

  Breaking rules, damage or any kind of harm can lead to liability and/or expulsion.

How the Centre of Ethics left the teaching room behind: tables re-arranged, nothing cleaned up

Coffee stains left behind by the Centre of Ethics become visible after I started to clean up

I was the first one to teach in Ada on Monday morning and was quite surprised that I cannot use the room for teaching as intended. To put the room into a state usable for teaching, it would have been necessary to:

1. put the tables and chairs again in the position needed for teaching -- the Centre for Ethics re-arranged the tables without reverting that.
2. collect the trash (single-use coffee cups distributed over the room, including where the teacher's computer is) and throw them into the trash can -- the Centre for Ethics had left behind coffee cups that they did not throw away.
3. collect water glasses from the tables and put them into our dish washer -- the Centre for Ethics had taken water glasses from our kitchen, but did not put them back to the kitchen from where they had taken them.
4. wipe away huge coffee stains -- in their ivory tower, the people from the Centre for Ethics do not even know how to operate a coffee dispenser, so they messed around on the tables of the teaching room.
5. move all kind of stuff (coffee dispenser, napkins, tea) into a tray and move the tray outside the teaching room -- the Centre for Ethics had ordered this stuff but did not consider it necessary to move them out of the teaching room after the meeting so that teaching would not be disturbed when the stuff is fetched.

I therefore wrote emails to four persons of the Centre for Ethics asking them to clean up there mess before my teaching starts in that room: first, no one replied, but then, the head of the board replied that this is not their fault, but that this is fault of the service from where they ordered the coffee as that service was supposed to tidy the room (How can that coffee service re-arrange the tables if they do not know how they were before? How can that coffee service find all the single-use coffee cups that were partly well hidden behind the teacher's computer screen? How can that coffee service put the water glasses back into the kitchen if they do not know how from where they have been taken? How can that coffee service clean all the coffee stains if a coffee service was ordered and not a cleaning service?)

Because the board members of the Centre of Ethics refused to clean up their mess, I had to do that on my own in the time that I had planned for preparation of the class. This all was then crowned with my teaching was later being disturbed by a coffee service employee trying to get back the coffee dispensers because the Centre of Ethics had told them to fetch it from the teaching room (instead from the kitchen that is just next to the teaching room).

I do not know why they do not follow my request to clean up their mess, but some hypotheses come into my mind:

• Hopefully, this was not the usual discrimination that probably every foreigner experiences in Iceland. (While I am -- as a professor from Germany -- privileged in comparison to other foreigners, even I experience discrimination.) -- so far, I experienced the university as a foreigner-friendly space (except that some scholars are maniac about enforcing a language policy of requiring to use the Icelandic language, because the university tries to solve the dilemma of being an Icelandic-speaking university and an international university at the same time).
• Cultural issues: If you have a look at the names of the members of the board of Centre for Ethics, then these are all patronymic: Elínborg Sturludóttir, Henrý Alexander Henrýsson, Kolbrún Pálsdóttir, Páll Rafnar Þorsteinsson, Sólveig Anna Bóasdóttir, Vilhjálmur Árnason. While the gender diversity is balanced at the board, the university committed to diversity in all fields. And in fact, cultural diversity is non-existing at the board of Centre for Ethics: they all have very likely a socialisation in an Icelandic culture: I once was told about a survey among Icelanders that showed that a huge majority thinks that rules are important for the Icelandic society, but that rules do not apply to yourself, because you consider yourself as so important that exceptions are justified for you (unfortunately, I do not have the source -- a social scientist reported about this at an introductory event on the Icelandic society for foreign staff at the University of Iceland). If you look how people in Iceland park their cars (one car parking in the middle of two parking slots, i.e. occupying space for two), this is no surprise.
• Maybe, this is not a cultural issue, but just personality of the head of the board of the Centre of Ethics -- but: I wrote to four members of the board and the other board members even preferred to remain silent.
• If you are in the board of the Centre of Ethics, there is the danger of developing the attitude that you are the authority on concepts of what is right and wrong behaviour. And if you are then convinced that your behaviour is right (and the head of the board of the Centre of Ethics obviously is convinced), then you make your own rules and therefore behave like as you are above the rules.

I also tried to build the head of the board of the Centre for Ethics a bridge by offering him to apologise, but the head of the board answered that he will not, because leaving the teaching room in that state was not their fault, but rather the fault of the coffee service not cleaning up. So, even saying sorry seems not to be part of the culture of the Centre for Ethics.

While I am not a lawyer, I would be surprised if their arguing would hold the Icelandic law system: they rented the teaching room, so they have to adhere to the rules of using the teaching room. Just the fact that they outsourced some service, does not mean that they themselves do not need to adhere to the rules anymore and are not liable anymore (even if they would have ordered a service to clean up the room who then failed to do that).

Does the Centre for Ethics think, they are above the law? (And what does it means for ethics in Iceland if such people run the Centre for Ethics?)

In fact, they did break all of the above rules, even the above 8th rule: they refused to take liability for their mess -- après moi, le déluge!

O tempora, o mores!

P.S.: I have no problem with holding an event with food and drinks, but for that, the computer science department has a kitchen/coffee room just next to the teaching room: just serve the food and drinks there, instead of using a teaching room for that. (When, e.g., the rector holds a meeting in the aula, the food is simply served after the meeting and outside of the aula.) Or a pragmatic approach: if you think you need to break the rules: do it in a way that no one notices it, i.e. clean up your mess.

The list of proposals that got funded. We are on place 4.

University of Iceland and Reykjavik University applied together for funding in order to start a joint study Masters's programme in Cybersecurity. Today, the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation announced (including video recording) that the two universities will together get for the project Nytt meistaranám í netöryggi 90 million ISK funding over 2 years from the university collaboration fund (Samstarf háskóla). This is a great collaboration between the professors of computer science interested in cybersecurity at both universities (facilitated by EDIH-IS, the European Digital Innovation Hub in Iceland, where both universities are as well involved in digital innovation, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or High-Performance Computing (HPC)).

The new cybersecurity programme funding is announced (ignore the HA and Bifröst -- that's a typo)

While the schedule is tight, the plan is to offer as a start a Cybersecurity specialisation of the Computer Science Master's programme at each university already this autumn, i.e. 2023. Students can then apply at their preferred university, but take as well courses at the other university. (There is another project that got 35 m.kr. funding to enable technically, i.e. on the IT and learning management system side, but also administratively, i.e. collaboration contracts, taking master's courses at other universities. But I doubt that this is ready when we would need it already in autumn 2023.)

Update from autumn 2023: the Cybersecurity specialisation of the Computer Science Master's programme is available and you can enroll at University of Iceland or enroll at Rekjavik University.

The project to make taking MSc courses everywhere come true

Later, this Computer Science specialisation in Cybersecurity is supposed to become a study programme on its own.

The funding will be used to hire professors, but also to import distance teaching courses from abroad and to purchase equipment needed to set up a cybersecurity lab.

A presentation covers more details: Powerpoint / PDF.

Finally, the new (2021 and later) thesis title page examples are available at the HÍ Corporate Design web page and I just finished creating a LaTeX template based on it.

You should find the most recent templates at https://gitlab.com/uice.

But you can also download it: UniversityOfIcelandMScThesisV2.0.1. (I have submitted it to Overleaf as a template.)

The PhD thesis template has also been updated: uiphdthesis_V2.1.0.zip. If you started already your PhD thesis, it is in principle enough to

1. replace the old ui-phdthesis.cls by the new one and
2. replace the two files HIlogo.pdf and UIblueribbon.pdf by banner.png
3. add \thesislicense{All rights reserved} to your .tex file (or update to the license you want to make your thesis available).
4. Also check the comments at the start of file uiphd_template.tex for possible further additions (\numberwithin and \UrlBreaks).
5. In contrast to Version 2.0.0. version 2.1.0 moved the bibliography management out of the cls file into the tex file where BibLaTeX is now used

While the old template used the school-specific colors (e.g. VoN had orange), the new color scheme suggests to use these school-specific colors only internally, but work targeting people outside the university (such as a thesis) use always blue independent from the school (this was by the way already always the case with PhD theses).

The PDF version is used by a print shop when printing and binding the thesis: the normal M.Sc. thesis pages are printed using A4, but the cover page (with the blue) will be printed in A3, with the front page on one side and the back page on the other and the spine (bókarkjölur) in the middle (so in fact, that page is even bigger than A3 to accommodate the extra space for the spine). All the A4 pages are then glued into this A3 sheet. The inner side of the A3 remains blank: to simulate this in the PDF, the second page is simply empty (BTW: that empty page is missing in the official Microsoft Word template) and it is then followed by a page that serves as some inner title page, i.e. it repeats all the information from the title page, just with a slightly different layout and without the blue graphical elements. After that follows a page with copyright information, and only after that, your real contents starts.

This means, when you go to a print shop, the title page generated by you gets anyway ignored (and therefore, the LaTeX template does not even bother about generating a back page -- the print shops use the back page to add their name there).

But as the thesis is also electronically archived using the PDF that you submit, your self-generated PDF with the title page matters for that version.

The fact the Word template (to be used by students) looks less professional than the PDF (to be used by print shops), hints at the PDF version is the serious one (and I can only recommend to use not that Word template. If you use it, try match the PDF generated from my LaTeX template).

See my older post for further information.

The Computer Science department has moved to the new Gróska building (between Askja building and the DeCode Genetics building -- probably, most people know it, because there is a gym on the ground floor and CCP is located there). The official visiting address is: Bjargargata 1, 102 Reykjavik. You can find us also on OpenStreetMap.

(I still need to find out which address needs to be used for paper mail to end up in the department's post inbox.)

The Computer Science department is on the 3rd floor -- the same floor where CCP is located, however, we are at the southern-most wing of the building -- see the purple lines in the photo below. Inside the building, take either the stairway A or B -- stairway B is closest to us. Inside the building, you will also find signs: Tölvunarfræði HÍ:

The floor plan of the Computer Science department is below. The two most popular meeting rooms are: the big teaching room Ada is GR-321, Alan Turing is honored by room Alan in GR-310, and meeting room Charles has number GR-326.

I am located in room 306. The phone numbers are now routed via MS Teams that I am not going to install on my Linux system: rather call me on my provided mobile phone number.

In the beginning, we were lacking furniture for visitors: I had to build our own chairs out of cardbox, e.g.: https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Cardboard-Stool or https://www.hometalk.com/diy/decorate/rooms/diy-cardboard-stool-looks-like-wood-31556361?expand_all_questions=1

In the meantime, we got visitor chairs and some other visitor:

In addition to a bicycle storage room for employees, there are also EV chargers, however an RFID card from Bílahleðslan is needed (if you need the RFID key urgently, rather fetch it from them, because the mail delivery takes two to three weeks) -- they use the IT infrastructure from Everon and some of the involved registration emails are prone to be deleted by spam filters.

Update: it seems that e1 has now taken over the billing for the charging stations.

HÍ eða HR / University of Iceland vs. Reykjavik University

Often, the question arises whether University of Iceland (Háskóli Ísland (HÍ)) or Reykjavik University (Háskólinn í Reykjavík (HR)) is better for studying Computer Science (tölvunarfræði) or Software Engineering (hugbúnaðarverkfræði).

In my experience both universities do not differ that much -- on the surface things might look different, but when you look closer, they are not that different. As an example: HR advertises 3 week intense courses to apply the theoretical foundations learned in earlier courses, whereas at HÍ, the application of the learned theory is built into the courses themselves: either as a project at the end of each course or a project running even throughout the whole course semester.

However, there is one difference (in addition to paying high tuition fees at HR): the diversity choice of courses from other disciplines. At HÍ, you can take non-CS or non-SE courses as part of your studies -- and these can not only be other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) courses, but also, e.g., foreign languages. As HR is quite limited in the number of course due to their limited number of study programmes, HÍ has a big advantage there.

Tölvunarfræði eða Hugbúnaðarverkfræði / Computer Science (CS) vs. Software Engineering (SE)

Another question is about the difference between Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði) and Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði): while both are in essence about programming, Software Engineering goes beyond as it has the "big picture" in mind -- not only, e.g., the big picture of a software architecture, but also related to management, e.g. project management and quality management. For example, SE students take courses from Industrial Engineering on project management and quality management (in addition to software quality management offered by me). When it comes to stakeholder relations (one of the biggest problems in software project are unclear requirements where the developed software does not meet the needs of users) and to user experience, SE requires many soft skills -- including psychology (e.g. work psychology and human-computer interaction and usability).

One might be tempted to say that CS is maybe for the nerds and SE for those who can talk to people and lead projects. But in fact, SE is not solely about soft skills, but you need both: soft and hard skills. Being an Engineer is an officially licensed professional title and as such, the regulations that apply to the contents of any Engineering programme in Iceland apply as well to Software Engineering, e.g. taking a certain amount of Math and Science courses which is the exact opposite of soft skills. So, to be a good Software Engineer you need to have both talents: people and tech.

Note that even if you enroll in our Computer Science programme, it allows so much freedom in selection of courses that you could take the same courses that a Software Engineering student has to take. (However, in this case, you will not be entitled to apply for a license as professional Engineer as you did not study any Engineering, but a Science, namely Computer Science.)

Further information

If you want more information on our programmes:

Bachelor (B.Sc.)

Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði) -- we added recently the specialisation in Data Science

Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði)

Master (M.Sc.)

Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði)

Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði)

Computational Engineering (Reikniverkfræði)

Ph.D.

And of course, you can also do a PhD in any of these programmes. Before you apply, contact a professor: either by a personal visit or -- if you are located abroad -- by writing an old school paper letter (professors get hundreds of email with PhD applications where it is obvious that the same email was written to many professors and thus, these email are considered as spam -- but a paper mail makes an impress)!

The Computer Science department of the University of Iceland is part of Erasmus+ and as such it is possible to have exchange of students (and also teachers) with other universities abroad (incoming and outgoing).

For an exchange, a bilateral contract between the two universities needs to be set up. Currently, we have the following contracts, but new contracts can be set up on demand:

Johannes Kepler University Linz
University of Antwerp
ETH Zürich
Universität Duisburg Essen
Georg August Universität Göttingen
Technical University of Munich
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Université du Luxembourg
University of Groningen
Lodz University of Technology
Glasgow Caledonian University

In particular for German speaking universities, I can serve as a contact point.

Discussion forum: Piazza

Most Computer Science teachers uses since years the discussion forum Piazza.com that is tailored for university courses. Students can ask there, e.g. anonymously to lower the bar, questions concerning lectures, assignments, organisational issues, etc..

Instant messenger: Riot

For your PhD students, you may want to have a means of remote communication between email and phone: a chat/instant messenger.

• If you are fine with awkward to use software and have money (or your institution used tax money to pay), you can use Microsoft teams,
• Caveat: Microsoft, one of the biggest cloud computing providers on Earth, cannot deal with increased load due to COVID: check status
• If you just need the chat and all your team members have anyway access, it is fastest to use Microsoft Team for this.
• if you sold your soul (and data) to, e.g. Facebook, you can of course use their messengers.
• if you like easy to use software and have money, you can use Slack,
• if you like easy to use software and are convinced that free and open-source software is better, you use Riot: https://riot.im. Riot runs in the browser and has mobile apps.

As with all instant messengers: disable instant notifications -- they distract too much. Instead look only after messages when you do a break/switch between tasks. If your PhD students have something really urgent (the lab is on fire), they can still call you.

Note: re-visit this page from time to time as experience from teaching in the Computer Science department is added.

Students seem to be satisfied with our Zoom approach (feedback, paraphrased for legal reasons):

The teachers in the department of Computer Science handled the shift
to remote teaching very well. Every teacher did her/his best and the
Zoom lectures are going well. Teachers have a positive attitude concerning
the new teaching style which is very encouraging that we will be able to tackle the coming weeks.

I attended different classes: both Teams and Zoom were tried and Zoom is
better. In some classes it is even better than showing up.


Note concerning Microsoft Teams

It is irresponsible that university teachers are told (by people who never delivered remote lectures for university courses in practise) to use Microsoft Teams for remote lecturing: Teams was never intended for remote lecturing (Microsoft Word is called Word, because it is a word processor -- does Microsoft Teams sound like a synonym for remote teaching?) and is therefore simply the wrong tool (and in addition awkward to use: you need a 3 h course to learn it) -- rather use Zoom! Teams is as well also the wrong tool for ad-hoc meetings with people who are not part of your team! There are better tools for small, but easy to use ad-hoc video meetings.

Whatever tool you choose, remember to make it accessible to everyone. If it does not use standards such as HTML (=runs in browser on whatever system which typically even makes it usable by visually impared), take care that your tool can be used via Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and also mobile platforms, i.e. Android and iOS. (The advantage of the mobile platform is that audio always works there, whereas Linux, Mac OS X, or Microsoft Windows sometimes cause trouble with audio devices, e.g. students do not have a microphone for their desktop computer to ask questions, but their mobile phone has for sure a microphone.)

Our premier tool for giving whole interactive remote lectures is via Zoom. Request a full license from our UTS IT department to get rid of the 40 minute limit of the free version (and e.g. be able to record to automatically upload to Panopto).

• Highly recommended reading: detailed slides on using Zoom for lecturing (check for updated from time to time) by my colleague Matthias Book.
• The setup is as follows: you do screen sharing to share your computer screen that shows, e.g. slides, and you use your webcam to record you, e.g. in front of a whiteboard (use a good, thick black pen). If you have a separate webcam you can also let it point to a sheet of paper on which you write. Instead of a separate webcam, there is also software to connect your mobile phone to your computer and is it as webcam.
  If you record to the Zoom cloud (non-free license only), you get these as two separate videos that you can then combine via Panopto (Create, then Build a session).
• If you record only one stream (e.g. recording not the cloud but via the Zoom client itself), then take care to disable screen sharing while you want to show something with the camera, e.g. the whiteboard. (Otherwise, the single created video will contain only the screensharing.)
• An example, where only one stream is recorded can be found here. Note that this has been recorded as a single stream only -- while watching life via Zoom, studentw can choose whether to see the webcam or the screenshare in full form. But in the recording, when recording localy, the webcam view will only be a small thumbnail in the recorded video while screen sharing is active. So deactive screensharing for those parts where you want to have the webcam view recorded in full size.
• Matthias is currently working on a tutorial video (check this page later again).
• Some practises of using Zoom for lecturing (time will tell whether these are best practises)

While Zoom is great for many attendants, you need to download, install, and start a client (Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows) or app (Android, iOS). While you can enable to run in the browser (e.g. set a checkmark when scheduling), it crashed in my browser after a view minutes.

For smaller meetings, e.g. meet ad-hoc with a single student, consultation times, or a teaching assistant meeting with only a handful of student, you may want to avoid the hassle of Zoom to create/schedule a videoconference session and downloading a client or app.

In this case, you can use video conferencing tools that simply run in a browser and do not need any pre-scheduling of videoconference sessions. There are mainly two alternatives that each have there strengths and weaknesses: Whereby and Jitsi Meet.

Please recommend these tools also to students in order to still talk to each other daily in learning groups or just to have fun.

Jitsi Meet for easiest and somewhat bigger meetings that run in Chrome browser or special mobile apps

• Pro: no account needed, no artifical limit to 4 users, open-source (=possible to install your own server), has some extra features (recording, blurring background, etc.)
• Con: other browsers than Chrome not well supported (they work, but sometimes video freezes), mobile browsers not supported at all, but apps are available, open-source (=if you use the free server provided by the open-source project, it may not handle a lot of load and might be limited to 1.5 h sessions)

Jitsi Meet meet runs in the desktop browser (apps on mobile platforms) and you need no account, i.e. you can immediately start by just agreeing on a URL and typing it in!

To give it a try, the base URL is https://meet.jit.si/
just agree on a room name, append the room name to the base URL and enter it into your browser, e.g https://meet.jit.si/MySuperDuperMeetingRoom

There is no easier way to do a videoconference then with Jitsi Meet! (At least if all use Chrome as browser/have the mobile app installed.)

ensemble.scaleway.com French Jitsi meet installation

Should the above Jitsi meet server be overloaded (and you are OK with a French as default for the changeable language user interface), you can use https://ensemble.scaleway.com/.

There, click on Lancer une réunion to get a random server and room name. If you like, you can change that room name and even use always the same randomly assigned server name to end up with a fixed URL, e.g.: https://v-4110.ensemble.scaleway.com/MySuperDuperMeetingRoom

Once running, you can switch the language: click on the three vertical dots (bottom right corner), then on the gear wheel for the settings, then on the Plus tab, at Langue, choose Anglais.

Whereby for easy small meetings that run in any browser

• Pro: works with almost all browsers, possible to lock a room and require students to knock to make you let them enter the room or put them on hold if you are still busy with other students (e.g. consultation time queue)

no account needed, no artifical limit to 4 users, open-source (=possible to install your own server)

• Con: account needed for host, free version artificially limited to 4 users.

If you do not have more than 4 participants (including you), whereby.com runs completely in the browser (all common desktop browsers, on mobile platforms the standard browsers)

The one who hosts the conference room needs an account, everyone who joins using the URL does not need an account.

Panopto / Recording for Panopto with a (Linux) screen recorder

• HÍ has info on Panopto
• While Panopto allows a live webcast, it has a delay which prevents interaction with students. So we do not use this feature, but use Zoom for live interaction and record that with Zoom and upload the Zoom video to Panopto.
• Linux users can use a screen recorder and upload the created file to Panopto (Note: Panopto even does optical character recognition of every pixel that is recorded, so you video becomes searchable). If you anyway use Zoom (the client works nicely on Linux), you can also let Zoom record to a file and upload that to Panopto.
• Research has shown that screen recordings where you still see a video of the presenter are viewed more than without presenter. One way to achieve this is to record via Zoom which then embeds the presenter video into the recorded shared screen (or enable in settings on the Zoom web page "Record active speaker, gallery view and shared screen separately" to get separate files). Another would be to use https://studio.opencast.org/ that is a purely web-based recording software and allows to record camera and screen into separate videos that you can then upload to Panopto by creating a single session that combined the two videos.
• If you recorded already in the past and want to re-use recordings now:
  • be aware that Panapto orders by default by recording date. But you can re-order them and asks students not to order by recording date, but by "order". (Unfortunately, UGLA shows videos always ordered by recordings date -- so make students aware of that.)
  • Note that Panopto sometimes forgets the encoding of old videos (black screen, only audio), but by re-processing it you can get it back: see this video for problem and solution description (audio is distorted: audio recording level was set too high).

Some Best Practises

We have a daily short videoconference to exchange experience in remote teaching (these videoconferences are via Zoom, so at the same time it is a practise in using Zoom; furthermore, instead of being home alone with family, it is good to see colleagues) and after one week of remote teaching we had a separate videoconference with students to get feedback from them and to let them know that our department is with them.