Discussion on Curriculum Development
News article | 11/05/2023
A crucial meeting focused on curriculum development recently took place at the Department of Town & Country Planning. The objective was to explore ways to incorporate valuable input from the LBS2ITS project to modernize the department's existing degree programs and introduce new ones. Dr. Amila Jayasinghe, Dr. Chethika Abenayake, Mr. Niroshan Sanjaya, and Dr. Nayomi Kankanamge were present, providing a comprehensive summary of the Train-the-Teachers Courses and project activities conducted so far. Passionate discussions revolved around the significance of equipping students with essential skills to thrive in the future. This involved integrating new technologies and emerging fields of study into the curriculum. The staff members emphasized the need to stay at the forefront of education, ensuring graduates are well-prepared for the evolving demands of the profession. The meeting concluded with a strong commitment from all staff members to wholeheartedly support the modernization of existing bachelor's degree programs and the introduction of new courses for master's degrees. The collaboration with the LBS2ITS Project will be instrumental in this endeavour. This meeting stands as a significant milestone in the pursuit of a cutting-edge curriculum that aligns with the evolving needs of students and the demands of the profession. It signifies the department's dedication to fostering excellence and ensuring graduates are equipped with the skills and knowledge to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
Department academics attend the Train the Teacher (TTT) Course on "Position-Navigation-Time (PNT)"
News article | 01/05/2023
Dr Amila Jayasinghe and Mr Niroshan Sanjaya attended the 5-day Train-the-Teachers Course on Alternative Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) conducted by the Erasmus + Capacity Building in the Higher Education (CBHE) LBS2ITS Project held at Sabaragamuwa University representing the Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa. Prof. Gunther Retscher, Prof. Vassilis Gikas, Dr Jelena Gabela, and other academics from the European Universities served as the resource persons for the workshop. The training course, held in the Department of Surveying and Geodesy at the Faculty of Geomatics at the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, aimed to enrich curricula for Sri Lankan universities through the application of location-based services (LBS) in intelligent transport systems (ITS). The participants had the opportunity to learn about the latest developments in Alternative PNT, including Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) modernization, integration of GNSS with other sensors, and emerging PNT technologies.
Department academics attend the Train the Teacher (TTT) Course on "Location-based Services and Multimedia Cartography"
News article | 10/03/2023
Prof. PKS Mahanama, Dr. Amila Jayasinghe, Dr. Chethika Abenayake, Dr. Emeshi Warusavitharana, Dr. Chathura De Silva and Dr. Nayomi Kankanamge attended the 5-day Train-the-Teachers Course on Location-based Services and Multimedia Cartography conducted by the Erasmus + Capacity Building in the Higher Education (CBHE) LBS2ITS Project held at General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) representing the Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa. The primary objective of this workshop was to train the participating lecturers from the four Sri Lankan partner universities in domain knowledge regarding Location-based Services (LBS) and Multimedia Cartography, as well as on didactic strategies and concepts. Prof. Georg Gartner and Univ. Ass. Andrea Binn from the Research Unit Cartography at TU Wien, Austria served as the resource persons for the workshop.
Department of Town & Country Planning received Smart Digital Classroom Equipment from the LBS2ITS Project
News article | 20/01/2023
Department of Town & Country Planning received Smart classroom equipment and Professional equipment for recording and live-streaming lectures from the LBS2ITS project. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The professional equipment for recording and live-streaming of lectures was installed in the OSGeo lab and GIS/RS lab at the Department of Town & Country Planning. Further T&CP was granted low-cost receivers and rugged outdoor receivers. Professional equipment for recording and live-streaming lectures will be utilized to virtually combine OSGeo Lab and GIS/RS Lab to facilitate additional student intake and conduct a virtual course. It facilitates carrying out lab sessions smoothly for both in-class and online participants simultaneously with many teacher-assisting functions. The Smart Interactive Board consists of a completely interactive screen with many inbuilt tools that could be used in explaining concepts, drawing graphs and images, annotating hand notes onscreen, and highlighting required sections in a lecture slide. The whole lab is recorded through a motion sensor camera which detects the movements of the lecturer giving proper visuals to distant participants. Several demonstration sessions on these newly installed devices are conducted.TCP is planning to utilize low-cost receivers and rugged outdoor receivers in teaching and learning activities for subject modules related to urban informatics and GIS. Further, students will utilize that equipment in problem-based activities (field data collection) related to land use and activity mapping, transport system mapping, ecosystem mapping, etc. The acquisition of new equipment of EU standards has improved the teaching and learning environment of the department. With the successful experience, similar equipment has been prioritized from the capital grant schemes available, particularly in exploiting the special budget dedicated to the additional student intake.
Department of Town & Country Planning received GNSS equipment from the LBS2ITS Project
News article | 18/01/2023
As part of the LBS2ITS project, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) equipment has been acquired for all project partners. This contribution is crucial to ensure the sustainability of the pilot courses introduced in the project even beyond its completion. The Department of Town & Country Planning at the University of Moratuwa has received one low-cost receiver and one rugged outdoor receiver. The receivers are currently housed at the OSGeo Lab, Department of Town & Country Planning, and we are plans to utilize them extensively in teaching and learning activities. These activities will cover various subject modules as well as studio works related to spatial planning and urban informatics. The availability of the GNSS equipment will greatly enhance the practical learning experience for students, allowing them to gain hands-on experience in utilizing advanced technologies for urban planning and analysis. This aligns with the department's commitment to providing a comprehensive education that prepares students for real-world challenges in the field of urban planning and development.
Department academics attend the Train the Teacher (TTT) Course on “Data and Models in Transportation”
News article | 28/11/2022
Dr Amila Jayasinghe representing the Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa attended a 5-day Train-the-Teachers Course on “Data and models in transportation” organized by the TU Dresden team, took place successfully at TU Dresden from Monday, 7th to Friday, 11th November 2022. The interactive two courses “Data in Transport Planning – Introduction to Data Analysis and Visualization With R” and “Introduction to Transport Modeling in MATSim” transmitted knowledge to run an agent-based transport simulation in Sri Lanka and analyse transport behaviour for different scenarios. The first part of the course included an introduction to the approach of script-based data analysis in transport planning. Therefore, the main tasks of data wrangling and visualization were shown and explained in detail. Furthermore, different visualization techniques and data preparation steps were introduced by show-casing script-based data analytics using transport-related data sets. The main goal was to highlight the advantage of the modern usage of the statistical programming language R based on the tidyverse package family.
Department academics attend the Train the Teacher (TTT) Course on “Data and Models in Transportation.”
News article | 04/04/2022
Prof. PKS Mahanama, Prof Rangajeewa Rathnayake, Dr. Amila Jayasinghe and Dr. Chethika Abenayake representing the Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa attended train-the-teachers course on “Transportation system planning for smart and liveable cities” in the LBS2ITS project, took place from 28 March to 1 April 2022 at the University of Moratuwa (UOM) in Sri Lanka. The workshop was organized jointly by the LBS2ITS team from UoM, Sri Lanka and TU Dresden. The workshop’s goal was to train lecturers from the Sri Lankan partner universities both in terms of domain knowledge on transportation planning and traffic engineering and on didactic concepts for teaching and particularly on problem-based learning (PBL). It was organized as a mixture of lectures given by Prof. Udo Becker and Prof. Regine Gerike from TU Dresden and interactive group work and discussions.
The first face-to-face meeting with the LBS2ITS project coordinator and UOM team.
News article | 31/01/2021
Prof. Guenther, Coordinator - of the LBS2ITS project met with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof. PKS Mahanama and the representatives of the Departments of Town and Country Planning and Civil Engineering with the project partner of the Transportation Engineering Group.
