This paper introduces a prototype of a domain-specific language for quick and efficient preparation of educational programs. Rapid changes in technology lead to constant modification process of the current program especially in scientific-intensive areas. As a result, teachers may need a tool representing a convenient, structural and formalized approach for learning program construction. The domain-specific language is devoted to serve as such an instrument and is based on concepts of X-matrix and problem areas map. In this paper functions of the language prototype and its syntax are represented. Key entities which comprise X-matrix and problem area matrix are explained. The implementation of operations on the entities in the markup language are described.

This work is devoted to teaching writing and submitting grant proposals "as you go", which allows our university to involve new research teams in a full cycle of grant activity rapidly and keep win rate at the level of approximately 20%. This course, which is called "Effective grant proposals writing and submitting training "as you go"!", available for every research team of our university. This course is for teams that have participated in external grant competitions less than three times. We have been teaching this course since 2010. We evaluated the effectiveness of the course based on the assessment of the probability of rejection of 613 grant proposals written during the training. The evaluation showed that if there was no course, the number of winning proposals could decrease for more than 70%.

This paper presents an approach to designing advanced training courses (ATC) in digital cross-cutting technologies (CCT) implementation to solve interdisciplinary problems in different industries. The courses are designed for domain professionals and leaders who are interested in digital transformation of their businesses. The main feature of our research is the strictly limited time available to the course team and students. Teachers must rapidly design and provide a course with learning content, and students cannot devote extended time to learning. Additionally, courses should be client-centered, meet student expectations, and be based on the multi-scale synergy of interdisciplinary, science-intensive solutions. Our approach contains two main steps for the design of ATC. The first step is to build a map of problem areas at the intersection of CCT and the project life cycle stages. The second step is to build an X-matrix containing the intracorporative needs of the project, the new skills of the trainees, the technologies studied in the course, and a list of course topics. Using our approach, we have designed three continuing education courses. We received high expert evaluations and positive feedback from most graduates.

This paper examines the object-oriented approach (OOA) for annotation and defining of hybrid learning resources (HLR) based on existing information resources, and scientific object and learning object paradigms. This approach allows us to create, develop, and update learning resources rapidly. At the same time, the use of one existing resource in different applications (research/domain areas) becomes possible. The approach uses metamodeling based on reusable abstractions: reusable learning objects and research objects. We describe the usage of basic OOA concepts in the context of HLR and incorporate the domain-specific language AHLR-DL to show the possibilities of our approach.

This paper introduces the individualized interdisciplinary learning resources based on scientific software, that usually serves for solving domain problems (optimization, simulation etc.). Integrating this type of software in learning process is a problem that we are solving by suggesting a new way to describe this software and introduce a framework that helps to form learning resource from it. We propose the concept of creating new advanced type of generative learning objects (GLOs) that changes not only structure of content presentation for different purposes (described by the contexts' parameters) but also it changes the way of learning and evaluating. The object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm is used for combining concepts of GLO and learning objects (LO) based on information object to formulate our proposed approach. In this article we describe the principles of generating the interdisciplinary learning resource for a master program's learning course. Also we provide example of scientific software (transport schedule optimization) and show how it should be described for being used in learning process.

In this paper, we describe the role of the game experience in the development of information-seeking skills among students. Participants searched for relevant scientific articles and information in a competition to answer questions. The quiz was developed using “Beaver's” Engine, which is usually used to organize outdoor games such as “Dozor”. We used the game concept to organize a quiz. The students' feedback shows the development of many skills.

STEM education is a wide, advanced and fast-growing educational area. Thus, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) courses may become obsolete very quickly (as soon as the next semester). To gather up-to-date information for the core of a course (learning resources) for case studies and seminars, we propose an approach based on the study of recent scientific developments reflected in articles from international research databases. The process to prepare basic information to design a course in STEM follows the following steps: 1. Students must present one paper to classmates in a seminar (student prepopulates and sent to the teacher specially prepared for this purpose form). 2. Based on several papers, students must present different solutions for one problem in the area defined by the teacher, e.g. urban studies. We applied our approach experimentally to develop initial learning materials with the first intake of students to a new master program in Urban Supercomputing. During "Urban Systems Analysis" course, students prepared the materials for the next course "Urban Computer's Simulation". The experiment shows, that the proposed approach reduces teacher load in terms of designing learning resources and allows students to adopt and develop additional skills from individual work, project-based training and context-based learning.

This work in progress describes a technique of course design in the form of learning objects (LO) sequences. We defined the distance between LOs (metric of learning objects space based on revised Blooms Taxonomy) and used it to design an objective function. This function is a sum of distances between LOs in the given sequence learning prerequisites of a course and its learning outcomes. In addition, the function contains penalties for the violations of the learning sequence, when, for example, one or more learning prerequisites for the given LO are absent in learning outcomes of previous LOs and course's prerequisites. A genetic algorithm was used to find LOs sequences complied with the given requirements of the course. To provide the series of experiments, this algorithm was realized as a computer-aided application in the development environment Microsoft Visual Studio 12. These series showed that the suggested technique is suitable for automated course design based on big amount LOs. Several suggestions to develop the technique are given at the end of this paper.

From the moment of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian higher education underwent drastic changes to international standards and enter the European Higher Education Area on equal terms. Joint efforts of Russian and Dutch peers and strong incentives from high-tech industries helped to launch new educational programs in Computational Science. Our international team of educators attempts to pick the best from the curricula and educational methods of post-Soviet programs and adopt the world's best practices in engineering education. In this paper we describe the curricula of a double-degree Master's program in Supercomputer Technologies in Interdisciplinary Research of the ITMO University and the University of Amsterdam and newly-developed programs in Big Data and Urban Supercomputing. We comment on the form and content of our programs and give some examples of student research topics.

The requirements for a knowledge economy raised new challenges for higher engineering education. Modern learning processes are characterized by the continuous growth of both diversity and the amount of data that should be understood by the student. Taking into account the rapid obsolescence of information, the focus of knowledge-intensive educational activities shifts toward the formation of competencies for life-long learning. In this paper we propose a methodological basis for the development of computer-aided transdisciplinary learning environments to induce a student's intrinsic motivation for education and research. A cyclic model of knowledge transfer is invariant for all subjects of the joint scientific and educational processes and can be implemented in academic centers of excellence to acquire and create knowledge through the partnership of students, teachers, and researchers. Furthermore we describe our experience with the deployment of a transdisciplinary environment based on the knowledge transfer cycle in the annual scientific course `Technologies of High Performance Computing and Computer Simulation' (ITMO University, Russia).