Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and B. Sc. Jose Pinzon Escobar, members of the working group High Performance Computing in the Engineering Sciences, are delighted to win a prize of 5,000 euros for their eLearning concept "CodeRunner for student software development for high-performance computers". The RUB's eLearning team honored innovative eLearning solutions in the 23rd round of the competition according to the motto "Hitting the Bull's eye with eLearning".

In order to reliably answer engineering and physical questions, massive computing power is required in some cases, so that appropriate simulations and evaluations can be carried out. In his courses, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel provides students with the necessary overall understanding for the use of high-performance computers (computer clusters), the properties of suitable mathematical solution algorithms and the implementation of programming techniques. Along with B.Sc. Jose Pinzon Escobar, the question "How can we learn programming techniques even better?" arose in January 2019, which led to participation in the competition.

The presence exercises of Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel are aimed particularly at students of the international Master's program "Computational Engineering". The programming knowledge of the students varies, which is caused by the different backgrounds of their bachelor studies. In most cases, however, the necessary time is lacking to deal in detail with the programming difficulties of individual students. So far, the solutions have been presented by the lecturer and made available to the students in order to continuing to work on this level of knowledge. Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel wants to improve the learning processes immediately, because he is sure that: "You have to practice programming practically in order to achieve a better learning effect". Together with the students and Jose Pinzon Escobar, he therefore initiated an open discussion round in January. During the search for solutions, the project idea for eLearning methods finally emerged.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Jose Pinzon Escobar subsequently developed the award-winning eLearning concept, which enables students to learn at their own learning pace. The implementation takes place in the form of weekly programming exercises that build on each other and deepen the learning process. Small code snippets are gradually programmed in question-answer mode. At the same time, their correctness is tested automatically. After checking the partial step, only the next partial task can be solved and the correctness of the implementation can be tested. Accompanying comprehension questions (multiple choice, answer input) support the students to understand the characteristics and essential aspects of the tasks better. By achieving the learning goal in various levels, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Jose Pinzon Escobar create both a sense of achievement and a high motivation to independently solve programming tasks (gamification). Thus, students develop a fully functioning software program at the end of the course, which can be run on the largest parallel computers. While searching for supporters, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Jose Pinzon Escobar came across the 5x5000 eLearning competition and were able to convince the student jury of their idea. For the introduction of the new eLearning methods, the use of a plug-in for Moodle is already planned in cooperation with RUB IT.SERVICES. After a test phase, further development will take place during the semester.

In the course of the RUBeL competition, the eLearning team supports innovative eLearning projects at the RUB. The planning and implementation is in the hands of students. Further information on the competition can be found here.

We congratulate the award winners and wish them continued success in implementing the project!