Why give grants to teachers when developers are needed
IT companies often spend money on the development of the segment and invest in future employees. There are many reasons for this: they talk about the obligations of industry leaders, the development of the local professional community, social responsibility and blah blah blah. In fact, everything is more prosaic: if you want a good specialist, bring it up yourself. Not fast, but reliable. We are such a socially-oriented company with earthly interests. Future programmers and developers with us help to prepare educational programs . How everything is arranged and what exactly the department does, I will not tell - this is a topic for a separate post. I will share my experience of working on one of the projects of the direction - a grant program for teachers.
Most employers prefer to organize contests, award scholarships and reward students who may become excellent employees in the future. They rarely pay attention to their mentors, although the victories of students are largely due to them. For this reason, 7 years ago, Contour began to support grants from teachers who improve courses, constantly develop and work productively with students.
Until 2013, the grants were awarded pointwise: the teachers told about working with students, about programming courses and related disciplines that they read, and we awarded the grant for being ... well done.
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At the start of the project, this was enough, but with the growth of the company and an increase in competition for personnel, it became clear that something had to be changed and changed dramatically. In the new conditions it was not enough to “reward” mentors “for this”: one man is not a warrior in the field and even the most stellar teacher will not train hundreds of people a year alone (we just need that much). We decided to motivate such teachers to develop and share experience and best practices.
In 2013, the grant program was divided into two areas: they began to award grants for training courses and materials and grants for communities and events for students-developers.
It was no longer necessary to compare different in essence applications, puzzling over who would prefer: the organizer of the regional programming championship or the author of the course in object-oriented programming.
In 2014, they switched to a new grant concept - a pilot project was launched in Yekaterinburg, and since this year they have been extended to many cities of Russia, they have formed uniform requirements.
Grants for study courses and materials
When launching the updated grant program for training courses, we relied on several tasks:
The main goal of the grant program was to obtain ready-made teaching materials so that the successful experience of one teacher could be scaled and conveniently distributed. We deliberately do not limit the freedom in the forms: video or audio courses, presentations, text materials, educational games and much more - the main thing is that the material is valuable and it is interesting to learn from it.
Kontur already has an online course “ Basics of Programming ”, developed by leading specialists of the company together with the grant holder from UrFU. Now the course has been launched in test mode, 1,500 schoolchildren and students are registered in it, who willingly listen to lectures and pass the tasks through the automatic checking system. We hope that the new courses will be launched with the active participation of the grant holders. For the participants from Ekaterinburg we are even ready to help with the video studio.
Grants for communities and events
Having dealt with the curriculum, we moved on to additional activities. Two-thirds of the Contour developers are participants of ACM or CTF competitions (sometimes both), there are guys who are interested in robotics. Participation in such activities pumps skills and gives an impetus to develop in the direction of programming.
These areas are only part of grant applications. Among the winners there are very unusual projects. One of them is IT workshops for schoolchildren, which Vadim Polyuga spends in Novosibirsk. The essence of the workshop in the modeling of the development conditions of an ordinary IT company, where students try on the profession of a programmer. Everything is real: the customer with the task, deadlines, managers, work schedule and even salary.
We prefer to support those whose eyes are burning. That is why, if we doubt - to give money or not to give, we meet with the candidate, after this there is no doubt.
Instead of an afterword:
The updated grant program was launched in June, the debriefing is scheduled for November. While we are not talking about the results, but making forecasts is the time. Last year, after a pilot launch in Yekaterinburg in Ural Federal University, five courses were updated and methodological materials were developed for them. If this year there are no less of them from other universities of the country and at least one interactive one is added, it can be said that the restart was successful.
Of course, we are waiting for applications for our competition, but even more - like-minded people among Russian IT companies. Alone, we can never support all the cool teachers wherever this should be done. And without them it is impossible to make education of high quality. If you like this goal - join.
Most employers prefer to organize contests, award scholarships and reward students who may become excellent employees in the future. They rarely pay attention to their mentors, although the victories of students are largely due to them. For this reason, 7 years ago, Contour began to support grants from teachers who improve courses, constantly develop and work productively with students.
Until 2013, the grants were awarded pointwise: the teachers told about working with students, about programming courses and related disciplines that they read, and we awarded the grant for being ... well done.
')
At the start of the project, this was enough, but with the growth of the company and an increase in competition for personnel, it became clear that something had to be changed and changed dramatically. In the new conditions it was not enough to “reward” mentors “for this”: one man is not a warrior in the field and even the most stellar teacher will not train hundreds of people a year alone (we just need that much). We decided to motivate such teachers to develop and share experience and best practices.
In 2013, the grant program was divided into two areas: they began to award grants for training courses and materials and grants for communities and events for students-developers.
It was no longer necessary to compare different in essence applications, puzzling over who would prefer: the organizer of the regional programming championship or the author of the course in object-oriented programming.
In 2014, they switched to a new grant concept - a pilot project was launched in Yekaterinburg, and since this year they have been extended to many cities of Russia, they have formed uniform requirements.
Grants for study courses and materials
When launching the updated grant program for training courses, we relied on several tasks:
- motivate university representatives to update outdated courses;
- to give teachers who read interesting lectures an opportunity to tell about programming not only to 30 students per couple, but also to a much larger audience;
- provide a chance for schoolchildren and students who do not have strong computer science / programming classes in schools and universities, to gain knowledge using materials from grant holders;
- encourage strong teachers to help beginners with course materials, share experiences and share best practices.
The main goal of the grant program was to obtain ready-made teaching materials so that the successful experience of one teacher could be scaled and conveniently distributed. We deliberately do not limit the freedom in the forms: video or audio courses, presentations, text materials, educational games and much more - the main thing is that the material is valuable and it is interesting to learn from it.
Kontur already has an online course “ Basics of Programming ”, developed by leading specialists of the company together with the grant holder from UrFU. Now the course has been launched in test mode, 1,500 schoolchildren and students are registered in it, who willingly listen to lectures and pass the tasks through the automatic checking system. We hope that the new courses will be launched with the active participation of the grant holders. For the participants from Ekaterinburg we are even ready to help with the video studio.
Grants for communities and events
Having dealt with the curriculum, we moved on to additional activities. Two-thirds of the Contour developers are participants of ACM or CTF competitions (sometimes both), there are guys who are interested in robotics. Participation in such activities pumps skills and gives an impetus to develop in the direction of programming.
These areas are only part of grant applications. Among the winners there are very unusual projects. One of them is IT workshops for schoolchildren, which Vadim Polyuga spends in Novosibirsk. The essence of the workshop in the modeling of the development conditions of an ordinary IT company, where students try on the profession of a programmer. Everything is real: the customer with the task, deadlines, managers, work schedule and even salary.
We prefer to support those whose eyes are burning. That is why, if we doubt - to give money or not to give, we meet with the candidate, after this there is no doubt.
Instead of an afterword:
The updated grant program was launched in June, the debriefing is scheduled for November. While we are not talking about the results, but making forecasts is the time. Last year, after a pilot launch in Yekaterinburg in Ural Federal University, five courses were updated and methodological materials were developed for them. If this year there are no less of them from other universities of the country and at least one interactive one is added, it can be said that the restart was successful.
Of course, we are waiting for applications for our competition, but even more - like-minded people among Russian IT companies. Alone, we can never support all the cool teachers wherever this should be done. And without them it is impossible to make education of high quality. If you like this goal - join.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/293506/
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