Undergraduate SPbAU. Start

The Master of Academic University has been training specialists in the field of IT for 7 years. And from year to year we are faced with a lack of preparedness received at the core courses for us. As a result, we have to teach in the magistracy basic (bachelor) courses. Therefore, it is quite natural that we came to the idea of ​​opening our own undergraduate degree.

As a result of hard work, a bachelor’s degree program was created and accredited, and in the summer of 2014 the first recruitment took place. In this regard, I would like to share with you the experience of receiving and - for a short while - teaching yesterday's schoolchildren gifted in the field of mathematics and computer science, and also to know your opinion on ways to further improve the educational process.

Training

To develop a bachelor education program, we studied the programs of leading IT faculties of Russia, Europe and America. As a result of the analysis and discussion of these programs, including with the involvement of our partners - employees and managers of Russian IT companies - a list of disciplines was compiled that should really serve as a basis for future courses on current theoretical and applied areas in the field of information technologies. Creating a bachelor program from scratch allowed us to get rid of all obsolete and irrelevant disciplines. In drawing up the program, of course, we took into account all the requirements of state standards, including with regard to humanitarian disciplines.
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But for the success of the bachelor's degree, one curriculum is not enough, even if it is the most advanced one. Success requires strong students.

Reception campaign

For the best students, we first of all turned to the leading physical and mathematical schools of St. Petersburg. The first attempt to hold a meeting with schoolchildren ended in a fiasco - the university representatives came more than schoolchildren =). It became clear that the bachelor degree could not take place. In the future, our success was much better, but until the last day we did not understand whether we could manage to recruit a strong group of students.

Not knowing for sure the level of training of those who come to us, we had to prepare in advance for a flexible response to students' requests. For this purpose, tests have been developed that allow assessing the general level of their training and identifying problem areas. In the master's program at the Academic University, anonymous surveys of students are offered in which it is proposed to evaluate each discipline (interest in it, relevance of its study, “depth” and “width” of the course) and the quality of its teaching. We used the same feedback principle in the first academic semester of undergraduate studies.

A separate question is the development of admission rules. In order to develop such rules, you need to understand well who will come. Competent rules of admission allow you to select the most prepared and capable, as well as predict the results of admission in advance. And although we started the preparation of the admissions campaign well in advance and spread the information about our bachelor's programs among the eleventh graders of the leading physico-mathematical schools, the fears that the applicants would not come enough remained. After all, the direction is absolutely new, the university, even taking into account the good reputation of our magistracy, is little known for schoolchildren and, not least, for their parents.

Contrary to our expectations for the end of admission, the struggle for the opportunity to study with us according to the educational program of the MIT department was already between winners and prize-winners of olympiads, and those who came to us only as a result of a single exam were not on the lists at all. Of course, it was very disappointing that the talented guys with the results of the USE, close to the maximum possible (300 points out of 300), did not become our students just because they did not participate in the Olympiad, which provides benefits for admission. We took these points into account when drawing up the admission rules for 2015 and adjusted them so that students enrolling only on the results of the Unified State Exam also had chances for enrollment. Honestly, we do not yet know what the competition will be this year: on the one hand, we have become more famous and there is no “first set” effect, on the other hand, many applicants are frightened by the fact that last year only olympiadians did. If you decide to apply for us, please fill in the preliminary application form for undergraduate studies, which will help us to get an idea of ​​the upcoming competition.

According to the results of admission in 2014, 25 students: 20 young men and 5 representatives of the fair sex are trained in the bachelor’s degree at the MIT department. All of them are winners and winners of Olympiads in specialized subjects (computer science or mathematics):


It was also unexpected that the geography of applicants turned out to be very extensive - from Kaliningrad to Siberia! Although most of the guys came from St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, students from Veliky Novgorod, Moscow, Salavat, Magnitogorsk, Dimitrovgrad, Nevinnomyssk and Kiev also study here.

It turned out that our desire to recruit strong students in itself was one of the factors why strong students came to us: when choosing our university, applicants, in addition to all other factors, evaluated the future student environment, that is, the level of training of those who come to us (winners and the winners of any Olympiads, the number of points on the exam). Many said that they would like to study in a team of equal or even stronger students.

Questions to you
What did you focus on when choosing a university when you entered? What factors were decisive? What would you do if you had to make a choice this year?

First semester

The first, or rather the very first, semester of a bachelor degree is over, the session is closed, and now we can summarize.

I note immediately that everything went pretty smoothly. We have a small set that allows you to implement an individual approach to the training of each student. The ratio of the number of teachers to the number of students is pretty close to one. Each group also has a curator who provides comprehensive support and assistance in resolving emerging issues, tracks performance and supports feedback.

Back at the beginning of the semester, students were very pleased with us - most of the first-year students won the competition of the Committee on Science and Higher Education and began to receive additional nominal scholarships of the Government of St. Petersburg. In addition, in the fall a group of our bachelors took the third place in the team championship of the Regional Olympiad in Informatics and Programming.

The survey on the results of the first half of the year showed that, in general, students are satisfied with the quality of the educational process and study with us they like =). Of course, during the semester, we identified a lot of different shortcomings. For example, student surveys made it possible to adjust the pace of some lectures, which seemed to our students too slow. In addition, there were cases of divergence of practical classes with lectures on the relevant discipline, duplication of information in mathematical disciplines and other shortcomings in the program, which we corrected fairly quickly.

In general, again, according to the results of surveys, undergraduate students study with great enthusiasm, but there are those to whom mastering the program is given with great difficulty. Especially math courses, especially since we have them very serious. It was no surprise that the load is really very serious. In some cases, we had to ask to reduce the number of homework for students to have time to do them.

And for you, a high study load is an incentive or a depressing factor?

In general, we believe that the results of the first half of the year can be considered positive. But, of course, we have room to grow.

It will be interesting to learn about your learning experience in other universities.
What did you like and what did not you like in the learning process? What points, in your opinion, are especially important to consider in the initial undergraduate courses?