The Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam is a leading centre of academic research and education with a broad range of strong research groups. The research and educational activities are organized in one comprehensive faculty, with about 2000 students and 1500 employees. This is motivated by developments in both science and society, with new challenges often found in the overlap of several disciplines. It has led to a policy in which the faculty is setting up new research institutes across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This holds for the three institutes that will be mostly involved in the JEM Project: The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), The Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics (KdVI), and the AMSTEL Institute.

At ILLC, which was officially established as a university research institute in 1991 (director: prof.dr. F.J.M.M. Veltman; website: www.illc.uva.nl), researchers from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities collaborate in the study of fundamental principles of encoding, transmission and comprehension of information. Emphasis is on natural and formal languages, but other information carriers, such as images and music, are studied as well. The research work relates to the usage of linguistic algorithms to give semantics for educational material in mathematics as foreseen in the JEM project. KdVI (http://www.science.uva.nl/math) aims to further the science of mathematics, both in its theoretical and applied aspects, and to stimulate the appreciation of mathematics in other academic disciplines, and in society as a whole. It has high standards in research as well as in teaching, and strives to collaborate with other institutes within and outside of the Faculty of Science for well-balanced contributions to the mathematical aspects of their research, teaching, and consultancy. The main interest of the mathematics department in the JEM project is to get access and be part of the development of e-learning material in mathematics, e.g., for use in joint courses of the Dutch Master in Mathematics, in the area of computer aided assessment and diagnostic testing of freshmen and remedial education in mathematics, and in web-based master classes for secondary school students and teachers.

The research work of the AMSTEL institute, which was started in 1998 (http://www.science.uva.nl/amstelinstituut), is concentrated around two themes:

* the use of ICT in mathematics and science education,
* conceptual development in mathematics and science education.

The research work encompasses all levels of mathematics and science education, from primary school to the university level. Many of the researchers are also teaching in the International Master of Mathematics and Science Education (www.science.uva.nl/research/amstel/dws/masters/), in the teacher-training program of the university, and in courses for students of the Communication and Education Variant of the master programs at the Faculty of Science. The AMSTEL institute has furthermore a special interest in improving the quality of the programmes of the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam. Several members of the Higher Education Group have more than eight years of experience in working together with university teachers to improve and innovate their teaching, in particular in terms of instructional design and in the usage of ICT.