7 years of educational projects Mail.Ru Group: sharing experience in key areas

Among the projects of the Mail.Ru Group's education department are training programs in 7 leading technical universities, including 200 IT disciplines, more than 17 online courses, 9 IT championships and about 1000 training videos on the Tehnostrim YouTube channel.

We talk about the directions and share the open materials: records of lectures, meetings and master classes, analysis of championship tasks and a selection of online courses for beginners and pros.

Educational projects

Biennial and semester programs on the basis of 7 technical universities: MSTU. N. E. Bauman, MSU, MIPT, MEPI, SPbPU, PSU and VSU. All educational projects have their own specialization: application development and architecture, system design, data analysis and game development.
')
Each year, about 150 students and graduates of educational projects come for internships at Mail.Ru Group and other IT companies - Yandex, Sbertech, Kaspersky, Tinkoff. Entrance examinations, depending on the university, are held once or twice a year and consist of online testing and face-to-face interview. The competition reaches 10 people in place. Teachers of educational projects - more than 200 employees.

Technopark (MSTU. N. E. Bauman)

For 7 years, Technopark has released more than 600 students. Another 500 Baumans are enrolled in a two-year program with a degree in System Architect, as well as semester courses in C ++, Python, Linux, iOS, Android, neural networks and data storage design.

Technopark lecture notes:

Web technologies (Dmitry Smal, developer of the game direction);
Web programming languages (Roman Samarev, teacher of the Moscow State Technical University na N. E. Bauman);
Applied Python + screencast (Vyacheslav Ksenz, developer of the game direction);
Mobile development (Evgeny Mazurov, Android developer of Mail.Ru Mail project);
Frontend development (Anatoly Ostapenko, frontend developer Mail Mail.Ru).

Feedback on the project of graduates of Technopark

Alex Novoselov:

The result of training in the Technopark is self-realization. Upbringing Real experience and development skills. A systematic look at the Web. Friends and helpful dating. Difficult, but pleasant pastime.

Ivan Remen:

The day we went to enter the Technopark was a crucial moment in my life. If it were not for Technopark, now I would work for completely different money and in much less interesting projects. Technopark turned out to be my ticket to life.

Maria Zubareva:

For two years I have grown a lot as an IT specialist. I learned that a programmer is not working with soulless machines, but interacting with different people. In Technopark we were taught to work in a team, listen to others and talk so that you were listened to.

Technosphere (Moscow State University. MV Lomonosov)

For 4 years, more than 300 students graduated from the Technosphere . 400 more study on the basic program "Analysis of large amounts of data" and open courses:

Development on Go;
Machine learning;
Development at Kotlin;
Preparatory course "Algorithms and data structures".

In addition, the Technosphere has a Tarantool project laboratory (opensource DBMS, developed by Mail.Ru Group), whose employees teach the disciplines "Databases" and "System Programming".

Tekhnosfera lecture notes:

Information retrieval (Alexey Voropaev, head of the Mail.Ru Search recommendation systems);
Neural networks (Daniel Polykovsky, developer of the Technosphere laboratory);
Data analysis (Evgeny Zavyalov, Mail.Ru Search machine programmer programmer);
Java development (Sergey Rybalkin and Alexander Pomosov, game programmers);
Algorithms and data structures (Sergey Babichev, MIPT teacher);
Software quality and testing (Alexey Petrov, Mail.Ru project quality director).

Feedback from students and graduates about Tekhnosfera

Leonid Stolyarov:

The project gave me an overview of the various areas and areas of development, including their features, relevant tasks. A lot of new knowledge in popular modern areas, such as Big Data and Data mining. Ability to develop interesting and exciting mini-projects in the form of homework. New acquaintances and communication.

Vladislav Efimov:

I enjoyed practicing. I tried to do the job qualitatively, achieved results. Maybe I will teach in the Technosphere: it's great when you are interested in something and try to convey it to others.

Kirill Golikov:

Yes, it was not an easy walk. I did my homework hard and in large quantities. I learned a lot of things, it all went well.

Technotrack (MIPT)

For 3 years, more than 100 students of Technotrack received the specialty "Client-Server Application Architect". At the moment, more than 260 students are studying at the project. In addition to the main program, Technotrak offers the following semester courses:

Industrial programming and data structures;
Development for Android;
Automated testing;
Neural networks;
Unity game development.

Technotrack lecture notes:

Development for Android (Yuriy Bereza, senior programmer for the development of gaming services, and Kirill Filimonov, head of the Android development team);
Administration of Linux (Sergey Klochkov, Unix system administrator);
Web development (Ilya Stytsenko, head of educational projects);
Development in Java (Rustam Kildiev, developer of E-Commerce);
Designing a DBMS (Danil Vagapov, programmer of an internal information development group).

Reviews of the project graduates Tehnotreka

Oleg Babin:

The base obtained in Technotrack comes in more handy in terms of principles: I know the basic approaches, I have the skills, I understand how something should be arranged, how it works.

Alexey Khatskevich:

There were many different courses at Tehnotrek, which allowed us to try different aspects of the development and choose what I like best.

Edward Poyda:

Technotrack gave a sense of self-reliance. After the second semester, I got a job as an Android developer.

Technoatom (MEPI) and Technopolis (SPbPU)

In Technoatom 234 graduates and 235 students. In Technopolis , an educational project of the Odnoklassniki social network (Mail.Ru Group), there are 96 graduates and 121 students. Both projects were launched in 2016.

The main program of Technopolis is “Designing High-Load Applications”; semester courses are Java, Go and Automated Testing. In Technoatom at the moment there is no main program; Semester courses include Perl, Go, Python, Neural Networks, Mobile Application Testing, and IT Recruitment.

The most popular course in both projects is Java Development (Ilya Dronov, mobile developer of the Odnoklassniki social network).

Records of Technopolis courses:

Use of databases (Sergey Mikhalev, head of the business analytics group of the Odnoklassniki social network);
HighLoad (Vadim Tsesko, leading developer of the Odnoklassniki social network);
Interface design (Viktor Ivanov, manager of the social network VKontakte, and Mikhail Frolov, manager of the social network Odnoklassniki).

Student comments

Yevgeny Kashirin:

Expectations from Technoatom were met by 300%, or even 400%. First, thanks to the teachers, Java headed my resume by moving Python and JS. The guys showed a beautiful and convenient IDE, actively promoted interaction with GIT and demonstrated not just a language, but a whole stack of currently relevant technologies. Secondly, I found a job - also related to Java.

Alexey Kvasny:

We developed a game similar to Space Invaders. It was pretty fun. Each person thinks differently and, accordingly, writes code in his own way. We had to discuss, go to compromise. The most difficult was teamwork - but at the same time it was the most interesting.

Igrosfera (PSU and VSU)

In 2018, educational projects Mail.Ru Group appeared in the Voronezh and Penza state universities. In Igrosfere at VSU, students are offered semester courses on “Developing games for Unity” and “ Testing game projects ”. In Igrosfere PSU is the course "Development of games on Unity".

At the moment, there are 69 students in Igrosfer-Voronezh, in Igrosphere-Penza - 44. While there are no public lectures of these projects.

Comments of Igrosfera students

Irina Serikova:

For admission required to pass a small test. I broke my head only on the last question, which consisted of a test task. But for me it was rather fascinating than difficult.

Artem Potapov:

It is necessary to be hardworking and purposeful. These qualities help both in the course of training on the course and after the device in the Mail.Ru Group.

Championships

Developers and designers from more than 100 countries participate in nine competitions. The general audience of the championships is more than 120,000 participants.

Russian AI Cup (RAIC) is an artificial intelligence programming competition using the example of game strategies. The annual average number of participants is 2,000 people. Both professionals and novice programmers are invited to participate in the competition, but first of all, RAIC is designed for experienced developers.