Slovenia - University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Slovenia

www.fe.uni-lj.si

The University of Ljubljana was established in 1919 on the foundations of a long- established pedagogical tradition. With its more than 56,000 undergraduate and post-graduate students, it ranks among the biggest universities in the world scale. A total of 22 faculties, 3 academies of art and 1 university college employ approx. 3500 teaching and research staff, assisted by nearly 900 technical and administrative staff. The number of students currently studying and training for future careers is about 34,000.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering employs 24 full professors, 10 associate professors, 19 assistant professors, 5 senior lecturers, 47 assistant lecturers, 11 teaching assistants, 53 junior researchers and 33 administration staff. The number of students, currently enrolled in its different programmes is approx. 2000. Research work at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering operates in 9 major fields, which are fully covered by 287 registered researchers and 31 technical collaborators working in 26 research groups.

The main sources of research funding are the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, European Union programmes (FP6, COST, NATO, EUREKA), and various bilateral programmes: US-Slovenian, French-Slovenian, UK-Slovenian, Polish-Slovenian, German-Slovenian. The Ministry of Education, Science and Sport also supports the majority of postgraduate students by means of individual scholarships. Many application projects are financed by Slovenian companies. The Laboratory for Telecommunications Research work is oriented to the traffic measurement and traffic theory, simulation of switching and routing of traffic in synthetic and real networks. Research work is also related to the quality of services mechanisms in combination with transmission of data, audio and video traffic over wireline and wireless IP networks. Security in IP and mobile systems is also one of the important research areas. Significant effort is devoted to exploration of the use of telecommunications and information technology for people with disabilities. Development (project) work is related to information technology systems and services. All key telecommunication technologies are coevered, such as NGN; IP, xDSL, MPLS, ATM, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, and TM, as well as XML, and Web applications. Important fields of work represent design and development of signaling system no. 7, converged services and multi-accessible portal systems based on fixed, mobile, IP and voice platforms.

An important area of research, development and implementation is the role of telecommunications and networking technologies in distance education. The Laboratory for Telecommunications closely co-operates with the Slovenian telecommunications industry, including vendors, service providers and content providers. In addition to strong industry cooperation, several projects at the national level, funded by the Ministries of Economic Affairs, Education, Science and Sport and Information Society are conducted. The telecommunication and information technology infrastructure of the laboratory is being updated regularly, through cooperation with local and international telecommunications industry, therefore the most important up-to-date telecommunication technologies, systems and services are always implemented for education, development and research purposes.

The Laboratory was coordinator of the national project named »Introduction of E-learning on the National Scale in Slovenia http://www.ltfe.org/crp/, funded by the Ministry of Education and targeted especially to the elementary and secondary schools in Slovenia. Within the project, the national e-learning strategy and action plan have been developed, different courses have been implemented, and several successful e-learning pilot deliveries and training for tutors and content developers were conducted. The project had 12 partners of a national scale, thereby comprising all existing multidisciplinary knowledge in Slovenia, necessary to complete the introduction of e-learning. Extensive collaboration with the Ministry of Education alongside the National Education Institute, a network of interested teachers and professors, pilot schools etc

Laboratory members also cooperate in the Standardization and Content Quality Development Expert Group established by the National Education Institute, which aims aimed to research, select and develop e- learning standards to enable content interoperability and especially to improve quality of the content. The Laboratory cooperates closely with Slovenian corporate environments (ICT related and other), industry and content providers (e.g. the National Broadcasting Corporation) on several e-learning projects. The Laboratory has also developed and successfully used the SCORM compliant e-learning platform E-CHO (Learning Management System as well as Learning Content Management System). The platform is widely used in Slovenia (both elementary and secondary schools).

It is planned, together with the Ministry of education, to implement a “national educational server” that will consist of a portal, national content repository, national e-learning system (E-CHO), and brokerage platform as well as distributed content servers, LMS, based on classical topology as well as Peer-2-Peer technology.

E-mail:
joze.guna@ltfe.org
marko.papic@fe.uni-lj.si
janez.bester@fe.uni-lj.si