“Of course, it’s nice to impress someone like that – you don’t do what you do for the awards. But this is important feedback for me because it proves that what I am doing is meaningful,” says Beneš, who works as an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Systems and Communications of the Faculty of Informatics.
Nikola Beneš has been with the Faculty, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, for more than 20 years. “Since my third year, I have been conducting various laboratory exercises and seminars. A few years later, as a doctoral student, I started teaching full-time, and I still do,” he says.
He earned the MU Rector’s Award for Outstanding Teachers for his courses Programming in C++, Foundations of Programming, and Algorithms and Data Structures. “I always try to make my lectures as interactive as possible. For example, I use SpeakUp, a web-based chat application that allows students to ask questions anonymously. This is particularly useful for first-year students, of which I have over seven hundred in the Foundations of Programming course. The lecture takes place in three classrooms, so it would not even be possible to communicate face-to-face with each student,” he explains.
Another type of feedback that Nikola Beneš regularly receives from students is the MU-wide Course Opinion Poll. “I get hundreds of comments there, but you have to take them with a pinch of salt because opinions in this poll tend to be very polarised. They are either very positive or very negative.”
Artificial intelligence has had a significant impact on studies, especially in the last two years. “This is not always positive, as students often use AI to do their work for them, even having artificial chatbots write their weekly assignments, for example. It doesn’t develop their ability to think about problems and solve them independently,” he warns.
During his two decades as a lecturer, Nikola Beneš also observed changes in the attitudes of those interested in studying at the Faculty of Informatics. “Around the year 2000, when I was a student, it was assumed that everyone who applied to the Faculty of Informatics would be able to program. Therefore, teaching was more focused on mathematics and information theory. However, today’s applicants and first-year students usually do not know how to program and sometimes have no experience working with computers at all. Most students have a mobile phone or tablet but are unfamiliar with a desktop computer. Some still need to learn how to type on a physical keyboard,” he explains.
We also asked Nikola Beneš what, apart from the teaching award he has just received, tells him he is doing a good job. “When I see that the Faculty of Informatics produces qualified and well-educated graduates who use what they’ve learnt to benefit society,” he replies.