Educated to Learn : How to enhance the education of computer science and informatics

The very nature of computer science with its constant changes forces those who wish to follow to adapt and react quickly. Large companies invest in being up to date in order to generate revenue and stay active on the market. Universities, on the other hand, need to imply same practices of staying up to date with industry needs in order to produce industry ready engineers. By interviewing former students, now engineers in the industry, and current university staff this thesis aims to learn if there is space for enhancing the education through different lecturing approaches and/or curriculum adaptation and development. In order to address these concerns a qualitative research has been conducted, focusing on data collection obtained through semi-structured live world interviews. The method used follows the seven stages of research interviewing introduced by Kvale and focuses on collecting and preparing relevant data for analysis. The collected data is transcribed, refined, and further on analyzed in the “Findings and analysis” chapter. The focus of analyzing was answering the three research questions; learning how higher education impacts a Computer Science and Informatics Engineers’ job, how to better undergo the transition from studies to working in the industry and how to develop a curriculum that helps support the previous two. Unaltered quoted extracts are presented and individually analyzed. To paint a better picture a theme-wise analysis is presented summing valuable themes that were repeated throughout the interviewing phase. The findings obtained imply that there are several factors directly influencing the quality of education. From the student side, it mostly concerns expectation and dedication involving studies, and from the university side it is commitment to the curriculum development process. Due to the time and resource limitations this research provides findings conducted on a narrowed scope, although it can serve as a great foundation for further development; possibly as a PhD research.

Hunting the Beast on YouTube : The framing of nature in social media

Humans’ perceived relationship to nature and non-human lifeforms is fundamental for sustainable development; different framings of nature – as commodity, as threat, as sacred etc. – imply different responses to future challenges. The body of research on nature repre-sentations in various symbolic contexts is growing, but the ways in which nature is framed by people in the everyday has received scant attention. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the framing of nature by studying how wild-boar hunting is depicted on YouTube. The qualitative frame analysis identified three interrelated frames depicting hunting as battle, as consumption, and as privilege, all of which constitute and are constituted by the underlying notion of human as superior to nature. It is suggested that these hegemonic nature frames suppress more constructive ways of framing the human-nature relationship, but also that the identification of such potential counter-hegemonic frames enables their discursive manifestation.