During the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the new one there have been dramatic changes in delivering computer science (CS) education, both in terms of what is taught, how it is taught, and how engineering programs are accredited. The rapid evolution of the computer industry challenges academic curricula to keep pace in providing students with a modern technology based education. Their experiences in school should provide them with the productive tools as well as to challenge the existing methodologies in discovering more efficient techniques. Teaching CS cannot be just a matter of training engineers to design chips or to create efficient programs. It must also provide students with a solid grounding in fundamental concepts to prepare them for a career that may span four decades or more a rapidly changing industry.

Everyone agrees with the fact that "the undergraduate curriculum should teach only the fundamentals". But what are the fundamentals? As we have already noticed CS is changing. Here are some examples of new fundamentals:

a) Emerging technologies, particularly the Internet, will have a more profound impact on our education in the near future;
b) A tremendous increase in the use of computer simulation, that can replace most hardware-based laboratory courses is evident;
c) Web-based teaching, distance learning, "electronic book", and interactive learning "environments" will play increasingly significant roles in shaping what we teach, how we teach, and how students learn. It seems that the traditional classroom style will not survive;
d) Information technology will be embedded in virtually every engineered products and process in the near future, etc.

The challenge is that we cannot just add these new fundamentals to a curriculum that is already full. We have to look critically at the current cherished fundamentals and either displace them or find ways to cover them much more rapidly.

This PROCEEDINGS describe the impact of the previously mentioned new fundamentals on undergraduate CS engineering courses at all four participant academic institutions of our joint project Tempus CD_JEP-16160-2001/04, during the first two years of this project. It is mainly reserved for a discussion of the transformations that CS education is undergoing as we move into a new century. The transformations can be delineated in two broad categories: changes of the content of curricula, and changes of the approaches in presentation teaching material.

During the past two-years period of active works in our joint project, six Workshops and one Symposium, mainly dedicated to innovations of computer science curriculum and involvement of computer tools intended to help teaching staff and students in the learning-teaching process, were held. In total, 72 papers were presented, and 164 participants from 15 different academic institutions take active parts during the preparation of the material and numerous discussions related to presentation of the achieved results of our joint project. Only 35 papers passed the referee procedure for publication in this special issue PROCEEDINGS. The contributed papers were divided into six sessions, on innovations curriculum, lab practicing, teaching tools, Internet technologies, Mathematics in computer science, and selected topics.

Let us introduce a brief review of sessions.

There are 14 papers in Session 1, referred to as Innovations in Computer Science Curriculum, pp 3-62. In general, the contributed papers cover proposals, methodologies, and other aspects related to efficient organization of different courses in computer science (CS) education.
In "Computer Architecture Courses in Informatics Departments", D. Kehagias proposes three courses that should represent the core of computer architecture in the CS curriculum.
M. Tosic and V. Milicevic in "Social Networking in the University Education Process" present their first experience with adopting social networking approach to the University education process.
T. Alevizos and C. Skourlas in "Database Curricula in Higher Informatics Education" concentrate on a framework for comparative analysis of Database Curricula in Higher Informatics Education.
V. Ajanovski in "Databases Course on the WebCT Platform 2002" gives a lot of details concerning organization of the course in databases involved at FNMS.
R. Stankovic in "An Approach to the Reorganization of Teaching at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering" gives basic elements of a proposal for the reorganization of teaching at FEEN and points how improvements of training and learning can be achieved.
C. Moraga in "Proposal for a first Course on Computational Intelligence using public domain software" gives a proposal for a course in CI and points to some experiences in using public domain tools as a teaching support.
C. Moraga and R. Stankovic in "Spectral Logic Design" give a motivation of introducing an elective course devoted to spectral techniques in CS at university level.
In "The Changing Model ?f Teaching and Learning Multimedia", E.Rossiou and G. Pantziou describe the way how a multimedia course is implemented at the TEI of Athens and point to intentions how to evaluate the course.
M. Janceski and M. Kon-Popovska in "Distance Education Teaching and Tutoring" concentrate on the increasing need for awareness of relevant and high quality distance teaching and tutoring.
K. Georgouli in "Towards Adaptive Web-Based Learning Systems" introduces adaptability in web-based systems based on the research in the domain of Adaptive Hypermedia.
P. Belsis, I. Chalaris, A. Malatras and I. Drakopoulos in "Supporting the Learning Process Through Knowledge Based Systems" discuss about effects and potential advantages of applying Knowledge Based Systems as a means of supporting the learning process and present the architecture of a developed prototype.
G. Armenski and M. Gusev in "Using eTesting methods in CS education" report the results from a study on using electronic testing tools for assessment of student knowledge in few university courses for CS education.
In "Parallel and Pipelining Compiler Techniques for ILP Course", J. Markovski and M. Gusev concentrate to innovation in laboratory practicing for ILP course curricula.
Lj.Antovski, J.Markovski and M. Gusev in "Designing Simple Logic Circuits" explain the motivation of involving VHDL in the syllabus and lab practicing for digital circuits design.

The Lab Practicing session, pp 65-86, consists of three different kinds and levels of lab practicing organization, and one paper addressing how the computer laboratory should be used.
M. Stojcev, T. Stankovic and P. Krtolica in "Lab Practicing in Studying the Assembly Languages and Computer Architecture" present a set of lab exercises used in teaching the assembly languages of MIPS processor and Intel 80x86 family of processors.
In "Computer Laboratory Practicing at the Faculty of Natural Science and Mathematics in Nis", V. Velickovic and M. Miloševic give a state of the art of technical equipment in the computer laboratories at the FSMN.
B. Jakimovski, A. Misev and M. Gusev in "Microcontroller Lab Practicing" give details concerning I/O assembler programming as a part of practical exercises in the course of Microprocessors and Microcomputers. Development of several software products, like device drivers and simulators, is described.
In "Computer Networks Lab Practicing with the NS simulator", B. Stojcevska, A. Misev and M. Gusev give an overview of lab practicing exercises for generic computer networks course curricula.

Teaching Tools session, pp 89-120, consists of six papers. Four papers deal with creation and using simulators, one with using intelligent tutoring systems, and one with using dynamic clustering system as an educational infrastructure.
In "Supporting Students Learning Databases: Experiences Using Two Intelligent Tutoring Systems", A. Mitrovic, S. Djordjevic-Kajan and L. Stoimenov present the main features of two intelligent tutoring systems. Both systems, SQL-Tutor that teaches SQL and NORMIT that teaches data normalization were used in a database course in FEEN.
D. Kehagias, M. Grivas, G. Meletiou, G. Pantziou, B. Sakellarios, D. Sterpis and D. Ximerakis in "A Low-Cost Dynamic Clustering System for Education and Research" describe the implementation of dynamic clustering system consisting of a Beowulf class cluster and a Network of Workstation class cluster.
In "Grid Communication Simulator", B. Jakimovski and M. Gusev discuss how their Grid Simulator can be used for teaching the students the different algorithms in implementing collective communications for Parallel Processing course.
In "Simulators for ILP Course", A. Misev and M. Gusev present how several different simulators can be used in order to help students learn concepts of advanced Instruction Level of Parallelism course.
O. Vojinovic, I. Milentijevic, D. Genov and A. Radulovic in "SimArch: Presentation Tool for Computer Architectures" concentrate on involving new alternative platform for creating and delivering presentations that successfully combines positive issues of both general and special-purpose presentation tools.
In "Logic Circuit Design Visualization in Computer Architecture Course", J. Markovski and M. Gusev present a simple logic simulator for performing lab exercises in basic logic circuit design.

The Internet Technologies in Education session, pp 123-145, contains six papers that promise to improve learning using Internet.
In "Tele-Teaching, Future or Reality?", R. Stankovic, D. Jankovic, M. Radmanovic and C. Moraga discuss the basic aspects of tele-teaching and point to the impact of teaching technology development to contemporary educational methods.
B. Jakimovski and V. Ajanovski in "Wireless Campus Portal" present unique standard functions of the campus-wide information system. The pilot applications from the portal are implemented using the WAP and SMS technology.
In "Application of Web Portal in Education", D. Rancic, B. Dimitrijevic, S. Kostadinovic and I. Milentijevic describe the possibilities and system architecture of web portal usage during education process at FEEN.
I. Petkovic in "Web Component for Online Course Management as Support of Educational Process" concentrates on description of web component which effectively supports education process.
In "Educational Tools as Web Services", M. Stankovic and M. Rajkovic present one possible solution for creating educational tools based on web services. The tool is used for creating of a Online Web Laboratory.
N. Ackovska and S. Bozinovski in "Distance Learning Robotics" point out to the potential of usage web-based robot control in forming a virtual classroom.

Mathematics in Computer Science session, pp 149-158, consists of two papers.
In "Discrete Mathematics in Computer Science Education at Faculty of Electronic Engineering Nis", I. Milovanovic, B. Randjelovic and E. Milovanovic present some interesting details that deal with the content of Discrete mathematics course for students of CS at FEEN.
S. Markovski, V. Dimitrova, M. Mihova and V. Ristovska in "The Mathematical Software Packages - New Teaching Information Technologies of Mathematics for Computer Sciences" show how standard mathematical software packages like Mathematica, Matlab, Maple, MathCAD can be effectively used for teaching mathematics.

The PROCEEDINGS ends with a Selected Topics session, pp 161-180, which consists of four papers.
In "LATEX Tools for Web Publishing, Screen Presentations, and Electronic Examinations", M. Ciric presents the possibilities of usage the software package TEX in preparation of high-quality PDF documents for web publishing, screen presentations and electronic exercises and examinations.
S. Georgievska in "Synchronization in Multithreaded Java Programs" concentrates on practical aspects of synchronization in multithreaded Java programs. Definitions of processes, cooperating processes and threads are given, and Java threads are briefly explained.
In "Contemporary DRAM Memories and Optimization of their Usage", N. Milenkovic and V. Stankovic give a short survey some of the most popular types of contemporary DRAM memories, and explain some techniques for optimal use of them. The capabilities of DRAM memory simulator used in lab exercises are discussed, too.
In "New Methodology and Evaluation System", M. Gusev presents possibilities of the realized system intended to evaluate students' participation during the complete semester and also evaluate more objectively the obtained knowledge and skills.

If you teach some course in Computer Science, we hope that you peruse these papers, and you will find very interesting topics, approaches and solutions for efficient organization of teaching process and lab practicing concerning your course.
What is more important, you can contact the authors for ideas and tools that you can use in your course.
If this PROCEEDINGS can facilitate wider dissemination of the proposed ideas, methodologies, and concepts, then it has done its job in advancing the state of computer engineering education.

On behalf of Central Management Team (CD-JEP 16160/2001),

Mile Stojcev
Claudio Moraga
Ivan Milentijevic