International e-Learning of Mathematical Modeling

The project "International e-Learning of Mathematical Modeling" (September 2016 - August 2018), funded by Center for International Mobility (CIMO), Finnish National Agency for Education, Finland.

The main aim in the project is to build lasting collaboration between the Finnish and Chinese universities on online teaching of mathematical modeling. The project builds on the Finnish tradition of teaching modeling using online courses that make use of online learning materials, video lectures, investigative learning techniques, and peer assessment between the teams of students. These methods have been successfully applied in the Finnish university curriculum since the 1990's. The current project works towards employing the ideas and techniques used in the Finnish national teaching to develop similar but larger scale international online courses on mathematical modeling in collaboration with the Chinese partner universities.

Mathematical modeling has an important role in the Chinese university curriculum in mathematics and engineering sciences. Thanks to the current project, the Finnish universities will be able to benefit from the long-standing experience of the Chinese partners, and the sharing of ideas will help further develop the Finnish national online courses.

The partner universities and the contact persons are listed in the following:

• Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland (Assistant Professor Lassi Paunonen, Professor Emeritus Seppo Pohjolainen, University Lecturer Simo Ali-Löytty, Lecturer Jussi Kangas)
• Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland (Lecturer Antti Rasila)
• Shanxi University, Shanxi, China (Professor Bao-Zhu Guo, Professor Hongyinping Feng)
• Hunan First Normal University, China (Professor Xuxin Yang)

The first projected outcome of the project is the development of two international study modules (one online lecture week each) to be implemented in connection with the Finnish course "Introduction to Mathematical Modeling" in September-November 2017. These international modules are available both to the students in the Chinese partner universities, and the students of the Finnish universities within the national modeling course network.

The general topics of the new international modules are the following:

• Mathematical Modeling with Ordinary Differential Differential Equations (coordinators Professor Xuxin Yang and Lecturer Antti Rasila)
• Partial Differential Equation Models and Control (coordinators Assistant Professor Lassi Paunonen, Professor Bao-Zhu Guo, Professor Hongyinping Feng, and Professor Seppo Pohjolainen)