Technopark Mail.Ru. Start
The hot discussion that this post caused on Habré suggested that it was time to pull himself together and write about the Technopark. What is this project? What are his goals? How are they achieved? What are the first results? And in the end, why does a salary> 150,000 rubles after graduating from a university seem achievable for about 30% of the project students? So…
November 18, 2011 at MSTU. N.E. Bauman held a speech by Dmitry Grishin, General Director and co-founder of the Mail.Ru Group, who announced the launch of the project. The aim of the project was to create a personnel reserve for the industry and increase the prestige of the developer's profession. A little later, on December 24, the first selection of students took place, in which the leading developers and team leads of the Mail.Ru Group took part. From the beginning of 2012 a group of Technopark employees was formed, a program was created. The first 40 students began to study at the end of February.
Our "task maximum" was to prepare a system architect, "minimum" - a good web developer. What happened and what does not - read below.
Technopark is an educational project that implements practice-oriented free additional training for senior students and postgraduates of MSTU by Mail.Ru Group employees. Wow, it's hard how. Let's look at the key meanings of this definition.
Practice-oriented - the result of training in each discipline and the entire two-year program should be products (services, websites ... etc) that can be useful. Which you can “touch”, ideally, integrate them into existing projects or make a commercial or social project on their basis.
Free - in every sense: we do not conclude any legally binding agreements with students, do not offer paid services, and, moreover, do not charge fees for attending classes.
Additional - our students attend classes outside the basic program of higher professional education. The curriculum of Technopark is not related to the curricula of bachelor and master departments of MGTU. Upon completion of training, project students receive a Mail.Ru Group certificate.
Senior students and graduate students - Bauman students are studying here, applications for the next stage of selection in the Technopark are accepted only from students older than the third year of any faculty and department. In the rarest of cases, we accept junior students - only if there is absolute certainty that this is the future "star."
With the help of Mail.Ru Group employees , we believe that a constantly practicing developer can interest students and give them the necessary skills to start a long way in the profession of a system architect.
')
The curriculum or program of the Technopark consists of four semesters and is approximately 820 academic hours. Each discipline is author's, i.e. created directly for the Technopark program.
Since the recruitment for the program is made not only among the students of the faculty of the Institute of Law (the most IT department of the University), the first semester is designed to “equalize” the students' knowledge. Such disciplines as algorithms and data structures, C ++ programming are combined with a review course on web technologies. Having completed the first semester program and successfully passed the exams, a Technopark student is ready to dive into the world of web development.
The second semester - MySQL, Java and the design of highload-systems. According to the plan, after the second semester, the student can already go on an internship in large companies to the position of web developer. According to the experience of the first year of work on the project, this is how it turns out: now out of 28 students of the first set of 14, they are interning, and 7 are already working as full-time employees.
From the third semester, we begin to give subjects that are necessary for the "initiation" of the future system architect: usability, testing, information security and system analysis. I will not describe in detail the content of each discipline, I invite you to look at our site . I will say one thing - we tried to design disciplines based on the experience of implementing our projects and based on the results of conversations with "living" architects.
But the set and the content of the fourth semester disciplines is still under construction. Right now, we are discussing, including with students, what is better - to do one discipline and a thesis project, or to abandon the idea of a thesis project and do, as usual, 3-4 disciplines (see picture below).
A few key points in the project organization:
Separately, I want to stay at this stage. In my opinion, the quality of selection largely determines the quality of the entire project. Now we implement the selection in four stages:
An important element is the events that we hold in the Technopark. There are several types of them:
What has been achieved in these one and a half years? We have not had a single release yet, so these results are intermediate.
The competition for the program is 5-7 people per seat, and a total of 797 applicants have already taken part in the selection. 180 people were enrolled in the training, now 116 students are studying with us, one third of them are doing internships and working in IT companies. The project involved 21 teachers and assistants. During this time we spent 200 classes - this is 800 academic hours. Our video lectures were watched more than 2,500 times, the average viewing time is 62 minutes.
We conducted 18 workshops and contests, in which 2 102 students took part. During this time we sent 76 people to external events. Our tours have visited more than 400 people.
PS
I'm not sure that the desire to receive a salary of 150,000 rubles after graduation from the university will be sold to approximately 30% of Technopark students. But if at least 10% will receive such money, working in their specialty, then this will be the best result of the project.
How it all began
November 18, 2011 at MSTU. N.E. Bauman held a speech by Dmitry Grishin, General Director and co-founder of the Mail.Ru Group, who announced the launch of the project. The aim of the project was to create a personnel reserve for the industry and increase the prestige of the developer's profession. A little later, on December 24, the first selection of students took place, in which the leading developers and team leads of the Mail.Ru Group took part. From the beginning of 2012 a group of Technopark employees was formed, a program was created. The first 40 students began to study at the end of February.
Our "task maximum" was to prepare a system architect, "minimum" - a good web developer. What happened and what does not - read below.
The essence of the project
Technopark is an educational project that implements practice-oriented free additional training for senior students and postgraduates of MSTU by Mail.Ru Group employees. Wow, it's hard how. Let's look at the key meanings of this definition.
Practice-oriented - the result of training in each discipline and the entire two-year program should be products (services, websites ... etc) that can be useful. Which you can “touch”, ideally, integrate them into existing projects or make a commercial or social project on their basis.
Free - in every sense: we do not conclude any legally binding agreements with students, do not offer paid services, and, moreover, do not charge fees for attending classes.
Additional - our students attend classes outside the basic program of higher professional education. The curriculum of Technopark is not related to the curricula of bachelor and master departments of MGTU. Upon completion of training, project students receive a Mail.Ru Group certificate.
Senior students and graduate students - Bauman students are studying here, applications for the next stage of selection in the Technopark are accepted only from students older than the third year of any faculty and department. In the rarest of cases, we accept junior students - only if there is absolute certainty that this is the future "star."
With the help of Mail.Ru Group employees , we believe that a constantly practicing developer can interest students and give them the necessary skills to start a long way in the profession of a system architect.
')
Project program
The curriculum or program of the Technopark consists of four semesters and is approximately 820 academic hours. Each discipline is author's, i.e. created directly for the Technopark program.
Since the recruitment for the program is made not only among the students of the faculty of the Institute of Law (the most IT department of the University), the first semester is designed to “equalize” the students' knowledge. Such disciplines as algorithms and data structures, C ++ programming are combined with a review course on web technologies. Having completed the first semester program and successfully passed the exams, a Technopark student is ready to dive into the world of web development.
The second semester - MySQL, Java and the design of highload-systems. According to the plan, after the second semester, the student can already go on an internship in large companies to the position of web developer. According to the experience of the first year of work on the project, this is how it turns out: now out of 28 students of the first set of 14, they are interning, and 7 are already working as full-time employees.
From the third semester, we begin to give subjects that are necessary for the "initiation" of the future system architect: usability, testing, information security and system analysis. I will not describe in detail the content of each discipline, I invite you to look at our site . I will say one thing - we tried to design disciplines based on the experience of implementing our projects and based on the results of conversations with "living" architects.
But the set and the content of the fourth semester disciplines is still under construction. Right now, we are discussing, including with students, what is better - to do one discipline and a thesis project, or to abandon the idea of a thesis project and do, as usual, 3-4 disciplines (see picture below).
Project organization
A few key points in the project organization:
- Attendance is free. We do not force students to attend classes, do not “bind” the turnout to pass exams or tests. For their convenience, we publish videos of lessons and presentations on the closed part of the project portal. And this year we started a professional video filming of our lectures - we put the assembled material in the public domain for all those interested.
- Examinations and tests - yes, everything is serious here. We deduct. With sadness, but we deduct. According to the results of the first session - 50% of deductions.
- Practical work is the main feature of the project. Each discipline, starting from the second semester, is conducted for the implementation of a specific project. For example, in a Java course, students create a game server. The process of creating each project is managed by teachers and assistants. For this, homework, counseling and workshops are used.
- Group work - starting from the second semester, students carry out disciplinary projects in a team of 3-4 people. Moreover, the assessment at the exam receives the entire group, and not every participant.
- Students are full co-authors of the whole project. They take part in the selection and organization of events (see below), in the formation of the Technopark program.
Selection
Separately, I want to stay at this stage. In my opinion, the quality of selection largely determines the quality of the entire project. Now we implement the selection in four stages:
- Online testing. Designed to quickly assess the level of knowledge of students. Now we have developed about 1,000 test tasks in two directions: logical tests and tasks for the assessment of knowledge in the field of programming. Each group of tests, in turn, is divided into three sections or subgroups, and each subgroup has three levels of difficulty. Evaluation of test results - point. The duration of the tests - 4 hours.
- Full-time professional interview. Our teachers are interested in having the most prepared students come to their classes. Therefore, who, if not them, conduct a professional interview. I will not reveal all the secrets, I will say only that during the interview the applicant reads and writes the program code.
- Full-time HR interview. We believe that it is more important to invite to us someone who wants, but does not know how, than someone who knows how, but does not want. Therefore, the most important part of the selection is the HR interview, whose task is to identify the motives of the applicant.
- Team building Not quite a selection anymore, rather, a way to start training a new stream in the spirit of Technopark. Again, since students come to us from different departments and faculties, they just need to get to know each other (in the photo below, students prepare to solve one of the tasks).
Activities and Activities
An important element is the events that we hold in the Technopark. There are several types of them:
- Master Classes Now we are holding 6-7 master classes per semester, inviting both Mail.Ru Group specialists and employees of partner companies to them. For example, in this semester (winter-summer 2013), ABBYY holds several workshops.
- Contests I will mention only two of them: an article contest and a partnership contest. We hold a competition of articles once a semester, the best article according to its results is laid out on Habr (examples here and here ). We also hold partnership contests once a semester; For example, last time, together with Microsoft, we taught students how to develop under Windows Phone (in the photo below, awarding the winners).
- Attend conferences and tours. We regularly (five or six times per semester) give best students tickets to industry events. In addition, we organize excursions to our office and data centers for students.
results
What has been achieved in these one and a half years? We have not had a single release yet, so these results are intermediate.
The competition for the program is 5-7 people per seat, and a total of 797 applicants have already taken part in the selection. 180 people were enrolled in the training, now 116 students are studying with us, one third of them are doing internships and working in IT companies. The project involved 21 teachers and assistants. During this time we spent 200 classes - this is 800 academic hours. Our video lectures were watched more than 2,500 times, the average viewing time is 62 minutes.
We conducted 18 workshops and contests, in which 2 102 students took part. During this time we sent 76 people to external events. Our tours have visited more than 400 people.
PS
I'm not sure that the desire to receive a salary of 150,000 rubles after graduation from the university will be sold to approximately 30% of Technopark students. But if at least 10% will receive such money, working in their specialty, then this will be the best result of the project.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/175511/
All Articles