BERLIN, July 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

The German Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) plans to offer free online courses starting in September for all who are interested. As a forerunner in Europe, the Institute would like to make worldwide interactive online courses, taught by its computer science professors, available via the Internet platform http://www.openHPI.de. The courses will be offered in English. To take part, it is only necessary to be registered at the "openHPI" portal. There are no admission restrictions for the online courses, which are embedded in a social learning network. Those who have mastered the material have the possibility to take a final exam on the Internet and receive a certificate.

The first course is to be conducted at the beginning of September by Prof. Hasso Plattner, founder of HPI and co-founder and chairman of the supervisory board of the software giant SAP. The course lasts two months and provides an introduction to the revolutionary new In-Memory Database Technology. This was researched at HPI starting in 2007 under Plattner's direction and then successfully implemented together with SAP. Called In-Memory Data Management, this innovation enables the flexible evaluation of huge amounts of data to be carried out with lightning speed. HPI estimates that there will be several thousand participants in Plattner's worldwide-accessible online course. Open HPI will gradually be expanding its online course offerings over time.

"Learners first work independently on the course subjects, with the help of learning videos, discussing them with other course members and instructors on the Internet. At the same time, they check their progress based on the provided self-tests," explained HPI director Prof. Christoph Meinel. Up to now, the HPI in Potsdam, a city close to Berlin, has offered thousands of video recordings through its own platform http://www.tele-task.de and via Apples iTunes U.

HPI Spokesman Hans-Joachim Allgaier, Tel. +49-331-5509119, presse@hpi.uni-potsdam.de

SOURCE HPI Hasso-Plattner-Institut