Sweden: Survey of Computer Graphics and Visualization Education Lars Kjelldahl Royal Institute of Technology This short overview of education in computer graphics and visualizarion in Sweden was compiled through contact with all the main universities in Sweden. Although we don't know of any "pure" visualization course in Sweden, some visualization material is included in many of the computer graphics courses. There are also courses on related topics, such as multimedia and human computer interaction. Computer graphics teachers in Sweden meet every other year. Also, education is one of the interest areas for the Swedish computer graphics society, Sigrad, and we are working with the Eurographics Working Group on Education. heterogeneous. The lab assignments vary. Some examples are: ¢ Use of SRGP and SPI-IIG5 from the Foley et al [I] book ¢ Use of some standard software, such as Quickdraw and Xlib ¢ Use of graphics software produced locally ¢ Use of sof~vare such as 3D Studio, Photoshop, Premiere,AutoCAD, AVS and Alias ¢ Larger project work using some typical fundamental software Conclusions The concepts taught in the courses are uniform, partially because there are a few snandard books that are very good and widely accepted. Lab assignments are heterogeneous. No sob:ware package is as widely accepted as the textbooks are, although international standards such as GKS and PHIGS affect the lab assignments at many places. In the future we foresee more of an international orientation in courses, partly due to the W o r l d W i d e Web and the European union. For example, some courses in Sweden have already been given in English. Locations with Education There are university level computer graphics courses aiming at computer science or engineering students in the following cities: Stockholm, G6teborg, Lurid, Lulet, Uppsala, Link6ping, V~ixj6, Halmstad, Ume~l and Skelleftet. In addition, there are courses given to artists or designers in Stockholm, Skellefte~, Sk6vde and other cities. Course Content There are different courses for different stu. dent categories, such as computer science students, application students and designer students. Technical details are presented for computer science students, while designer students learn to use systems such as Alias. Here we mainly cover the first category, although courses for application students usually have a rather similar structure.The overall impression from reading the description of courses in Sweden is that they are rather uniform, using one of the two main textbooks Foley et al, 1994 [2] and Hearn and Baker, World Wide Web Information on many of the courses are published on the Web, but unforzunately almos-r all the material is in Swedish.This is expected to change within the next few years.We plan to make the information available through the home page of the Swedish computer graphics society, ht~:/ /www.nada.kth.se/gmphics/SIGRAD/ References I. Foley,J. D.,A. van Dam, S.K. Feiner and J. E Hughes. Computer Graphics- Principles and Pract/ce. Second Edition. Addison-Wesley, 1990. I. Foley, J. D., A. van Dam, $. K. Feiner, J. E Hughes and R. Phillips. Introduction to Computer Graphics. Addison-Wesley, 1994. I. I-learn, D. and M. P. Baker. Computer Graphics. Second Edition, Prentice Hall, 1994 [31. The size of the courses varies. Sometimes courses are divided into two courses, covering about five weeks of full-time w o r k , although they usually are given over a longer period of time such as 10 weeks. At a few locations, there are also more advanced courses using the book by Foley et al, 1990 [I] and copies of different research and survey papers. We feel that the courses are rather homogeneous from a theoretical point of view, i.e. they cover the same concepts. From a practical point of view, however, they are rather 1994. bars KJelldahl NADA, KTH S - 100 44 Stockholm Sweden Tel:+46-8-790-8159 Fa~c+46-8-790-0930 Emaihlassek]@nada.k'th.se http://~.nada.kth.sel-lassekjl Computer Graphics August1996 2S

/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/sweden-survey-of-computer-graphics-and-visualization-education-Ba0MFnBSNB