Studying at UCD is slightly different than studying at Uppsala Universitet or Universität Hamburg.
All the modules I have chosen are worth 5 credits and are taught over the whole semester. Every lecture takes 50 minutes and most of the lectures have a classroom atmosphere, which means that there is a lot of discussion rather than just the teacher presenting slides. Most of the lectures come with an optional tutorial where students can work on their homeworks while receiving help from teaching assistants.
Even if there is an exam in the end of the semester, it is usually only a part of the assessment. Homeworks, logs, and even participation in discussions is necessary to get good marks.
It wasn’t easy to choose modules. I have already tried to register modules when I was still in Sweden. When I arrived in Dublin I heard that two of those courses were taught in Fudan (China) and another one was a masters course (I am somehow not allowed to choose master courses). After trying to register several other courses, I finally found 5 modules which don’t have any timetable clashes (it’s impossible to register courses which don’t fit perfectly in your timetable). I chose the following modules:
Theory of Games
Advanced Computational Science
Object-Oriented Design
Connectionist Computing and
Introduction to Robotics.
Execpt for Theory of Games all of the above courses are interesting and taught well. Especially Connectionist Computing and Object-Oriented Design are super exciting and given by lecturers with a lot of experience in research and industry.
Introduction to Robotics is a course for computer scientist, but with mainly engineers attending. In fact, we play with Lego robots.
Theory of Games seems to be an interesting topic, but unfortnately the lecturer has a slow tempo and seems to have forgotten that this is a module for mathematicians.
All in all I am happy with my choices especially as the modules cover a wide variety of topics. If there weren’t so many free hours combined with an extremely pricey dining hall…
Hamburgaren i Dublin 