Constantine the Philosopher University is a public university founded in 1992 as the University of Education in Nitra (renamed to UKF in 1996) and now, 5 faculties, is the 4th greatest university in Slovakia. UKF as the first Slovak university use for all faculties a central e-learning environment. The university educational portal http://edu.ukf.sk is based on the department’s research, expertise and long-term experience.
The researchers involved in the proposed project work at the Department of Informatics provide education to prospective teachers of informatics as well as the professionals in the field of applied informatics. The educational research of the department is concerned mainly with the theory of teaching informatics and effective application of ICT in education (development of educational software, e-learning with its methodology, implementation and evaluation covering all levels and forms of education. Every subject from the study program has its own e-course.
The Department is considered to be a pioneer in the field of e-learning (specially blended learning), not only at the local level but even from the national perspective. The UKF puts much emphasis on international cooperation in all fields of study and research. Department of Informatics co-operates with European universities (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia) through international projects (European Social Fund, Comenius, 7th Framework Programme, LLP programme Leonardo DaVinci, Norway grants) or by organizing joint workshops, seminars and international conferences (Distance Learning in Applied Informatics – since 2001). Staff and students actively participate in international mobility programmes (Socrates/Erasmus, CEEPUS).
Martin Drlík
Martin Drlik received the M.S. degree in biophysics from the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2001, and the PhD degree in the research study program of the Theory of Computer Science Education from Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia, in 2009. Since 2019, he has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Informatics, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. He is currently a member of the Knowledge Discovery Research Group. His research interests include learning analytics, educational data mining, software engineering, and database systems.
Dr Drlík has been a member of ACM since 2007. He was a recipient of the Green Group Award (best paper) of the International Conference on Computational Science 2013 and the Workshop on Computational Finance and Business Intelligence (Barcelona, 2013).
Ján Skalka
Jan Skalka received the M.S. degree in mathematics and informatics from the Department of Informatics, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia. He defended his PhD thesis in 2004 in the research study program of Technology of Education from Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, where he has been the Head of the Department of Informatics, since 2018. He is currently a member of the Knowledge Discovery Research Group. His research interests include information systems implementation and integration, blended learning and e-learning application in education, programming learning and teaching, and development of applications to support education.