Course design

A course with NEST Desktop can be organized for students at different levels of university education. The course can be held in a computer lab, allowing for personal interaction with other course participants and tutors. Alternatively, the course can be held online, where students use their own computers at home and interact by video chat. For both options, NEST Desktop is deployed in a virtual machine that is controlled by the students via a standard web browser.

A typical course could be scheduled as a one-week block course with fixed hours for complementary lectures, technical tutorials and consultation hours. The complementary lectures provide the basic background information needed to understand the course assignments. The technical tutorials explain step by step the operation of NEST Desktop. The consultation hours give students an opportunity to ask the tutors questions about the course assignments. Students can also post their questions and comments to the teaching staff by email.

Specific sample assignments are provided for students with different background knowledge.