ViCoCITY – A virtual company environment used in distance education to teach key professional skills

This paper will discuss the background and rationale for the introduction of ViCoCITY to the Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSc in IT) degree offered through distance education by Oscail, Dublin City University (DCU)

The Effect of the Bologna Process on the Cartographic Courses in the Hungarian Higher Education

After the 1990 political reforms, it took several years until Hungary officially signed the Bologna Declaration (1999). The progress was very slow: the implementation of the Bologna principles only started in 2002. The nation-wide introduction of the BA and BSc system began in 2006 and will be continued at master level in 2009. One of the most important bodies in this process has been the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. This Board consists of university professors and academics and has control over the establishment and introduction of curricula at all higher education institutions in Hungary. As for cartography and geodesy, we had two independent 5-year degree programmes in the pre-Bologna system (Cartography at Eötvös Loránd University, and Surveying and Geoinformatical Engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics) and two 3-year degree programmes in the College of Surveying and Land Administration in Székesfehérvár. Due to the integration of Hungarian higher education institutions in 2000, this college was incorporated into the University of West Hungary as a faculty. These institutions had worked a lot on establishing and developing their own programmes. However, due to the implementation of the Bologna process, these individual programmes have lost their independence. It is only natural that all these institutions were interested in finding a solution to keep as much of their original curricula as only possible. Although about 140 BA and BSc programmes were established at national level, the Bologna system in Hungary did not allow any cartography-related BSc programme. However, Eötvös Loránd University and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics have established their MSc programmes that are related to cartography. Four universities also agreed on starting a new MSc in GIS, but the Hungarian Accreditation Committee refused the approval of their joint proposal. There are further cartography-related MSc programmes waiting for decision by the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. Some BSc and MSc programmes (such as geography and informatics) established specialization in GIS, and this gives us the opportunity of teaching cartography and GIS to a larger number of students