EU funds help: The University of South Bohemia teaches artificial intelligence thanks to the EU

The unique study programme has been offered since 2021 by the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. Students here can newly sign up for the Master's programme in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. The project implementation, in which the University of South Bohemia cooperates with a university in Bavaria, was supported by a grant from EU funds.

As stated by Rudolf Vohnout, head of the Department of Informatics at the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, the main output of the project was the study programme focusing on artificial intelligence and data science. It is unique because it is the only cross-border and profession-oriented study programme on this topic, taught at Czech higher education institutions. "There is a mandatory professional experience. Students have to work in a company that deals with artificial intelligence, data analysis or data processing already during their studies," he explained.

A MILLION EURO GRANT
According to him, the biggest challenge was to convince the Regional Authority and the Centre for Regional Development to support the project. "The risk paid off for us because the project was extremely successful. We have a huge demand from students," said Rudolf Vohnout.

The programme is taught in English and its completion is conditional upon studying a mandatory semester at the partner university in Deggendorf. Mr Vohnout appreciates the good cooperation with that university. "We had to adjust some legislative things because the education system there is a little different from ours, but now it all works very well," he said. Both institutions received a total of roughly one million euros from EU funds for this. "It was great that the grant paid for the preparation of the study programme as well as the materials, the specialized software we use for teaching, or the pilot year," Rudolf Vohnout listed. He added that an integral part of the project was also the creation of a hands-on laboratory that will use research and teaching methods in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

According to him, it would be very difficult to implement such a large project without funding from the European Union. “You can do an internal project with which you apply for funding, but you would never get this much. We also wouldn't be able to do it on such a large scale, we wouldn't manage to do something so big that we could brag about it," said the head of the Department of Informatics at the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia. He has already been invited to pass on his experience for example to Helsinki.

PROGRAMME FINETUNED BY STUDENTS
The students who studied the pilot year have a large share in the success of the programme. "They gave us incredibly useful feedback on the study programme as such. That is not quite common. We received initial reactions from them on the subjects - not only on their content but also on their sequence, based on what they learn here and what they learn in Germany. Thanks to that, we were able to adjust and fine-tune the programme," Rudolf Vohnout pointed out one of the key areas of the project. Another one was the contracted companies that helped with concretizing the form of internships. "They help us, for example, to assign qualification theses that students write and the companies then make use of them," he explained.

Artificial intelligence can be a great helper that we will encounter more and more often in everyday life. But using it requires new skills that one should learn. "Not long ago, an interview was published with Professor Michal Pěchouček from the Czech Technical University, who is also one of the pioneers in this country, and he said that everyone should learn three basic skills in primary school - reading, writing and prompting. I thought that was nice,” he said.

"Prompting is the way we communicate with artificial intelligence, the way we request information from it. It's about how you enter your query. Semantics is hugely important to how AI responds to you. So learning to ask a question in the right way so that you get the answer you want is also a new discipline," Rudolf Vohnout concluded.
 
"There is a mandatory professional experience. Students must get an internship in a company that deals with artificial intelligence, data analysis or data processing." Rudolf Vohnout, University of South Bohemia.
 
EU FUNDS HELPED THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH BOHEMIA. Students can now delve into the secrets of artificial intelligence in České Budějovice. The establishment of the new programme was co-financed by EU funds, and it involved a university in Czechia as well as its partner university in Bavaria. Rudolf Vohnout (bottom centre) sees one of the great benefits of the new programme in the fact that young people work in technology companies already during their studies. The project included the creation of a hands-on laboratory.

Photo: Deník daily/ Klára Skálová + University of South Bohemia archive