New perspectives on teaching computer science in europe

In this paper we describe our joint project, under the European Union’s Curriculum
Development at Initial/Intermediate level (CDI) initiative, to establish a collaborative
Masters level course in Computer Science.
The project is proposed by five European institutions: Instituto Superior de Engenharia
de Coimbra (Portugal), Hochschule fur Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg
(Germany), University of Huddersfield (England), Université François Rabelais Tours-
Blois (France) and Turku Polytechnic (Finland). This project aims to create a
harmonized computer science course between the participating institutions, where the
students must study in three different countries, using three different languages, without
extending the number of study years. We discuss the philosophy and aims of the project
and some implementation details. Each of the participating institutions/countries has its
own traditions and management structures, and we describe the problems that arose in
coordinating these and the solutions and compromises that we reached