Synergy. IT Business and IT Education
Synergy. IT Business and IT Education is a platform where cool collaborations and ways to transform the educational system in Ukraine are born - involving authorities, IT companies, and educational institutions. The mixed online and offline formats enable us to attract more than 3,500 participants annually: top managers of large-scale IT companies and regional IT clusters, representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, heads of higher education institutions, schools, private initiatives and leaders of student unions. This is the biggest Ukrainian IT education event, which we are very proud to prepare every year.
VR mine safety development for children
UNICEF together with the IT Ukraine Association created the world's first virtual reality (VR) for mine safety for children in eastern Ukraine. As early as April, in high-explosive areas, VR will be a component of UNICEF's educational sessions in schools with the support of the German and Italian governments. Educational sessions will allow children to consolidate the knowledge they receive in traditional lesson in an entertaining format.
Teachers Internship
Free internships for teachers help improve the level of education in technology and software at Ukrainian universities. The EPAM Teachers Internship program began in July 2017. During the first half of 2021 more than 300 internship participants were recruited. Seven waves of teacher internships have already been held in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv.
A unique feature of the Teachers Internship is that the application does not focus on a particular technology, but provides a broad understanding of the modern IT industry. Along with an overview of applied specializations such as Java, DevOps, .Net, QA, and Frontend, students learn the basics of project management, Scrum methodology, Git, and Jira tools.
The program is free and is repeated twice a year (winter and summer) in an online format. In 2021, 320+ teachers and educators from 47 cities in Ukraine registered for the internship. Participants who successfully complete the internship get a certificate from the IT Ukraine Association and EPAM.
Pre-Junior Program
Pre-Junior Program is a common initiative for high school students of IT Ukraine Association and EPAM University. The project is designed specifically for high school students who want to learn more about IT and get basic knowledge and skills in software development. The first run of the program took place in April 2021 and attracted 180 registrations from pupils all over Ukraine. Nearly 300 participants applied for the second round of the project, and despite the war and inconsistent Internet, schoolchildren successfully completed the training and even made their first project.
The participants can learn:
- IT sphere of Ukraine, the main trends and prospects.
- Types of IT companies and how they differ.
- Roles and professions in the IT-sphere, main specializations.
- Team work: Agile methodology and SCRUM framework.
- Tools for working with code (Git, etc.).
- Information security, internet security, and secure data storage.
- Creating a CV and finding your first job.
Pre-Junior Program is a great opportunity for teenagers to learn more about the IT world and choose their future profession correctly. The program is planned to take place 1-2 times a year, find announcements on the official pages of EPAM University on Facebook.
IT Ukraine Education Summit
Education Summit is a standalone format of the Association's online events, under which more than 400 participants have a possibility to listen to heated discussions and debates about IT education and trends in its development for different age groups. For the second year already, we unite representatives of authorities, leading universities and IT companies to discuss IT education reform priorities, university and corporate education, education of schoolchildren, adults and switchers, and share insights and interesting educational discoveries.
Teacher’s speedup
A training project for teachers, the first course of which took place January 24 - 28, 2 sessions per day. After completing the training, teachers were given a certificate of professional development (1 credit). The course is useful for teachers who want to be in the trend of all the innovations that occur in the IT-sphere and then apply new knowledge and skills in the learning process, to bring practical skills to courses and training programs update. The course took place in the online format. The training course was held in partnership with Sigma Software and the IT Ukraine Association.
The aim of the course was to share practical skills in popular IT areas with university and college professors, as well as skills that would be useful in organizing the learning process and working with students. The course was oriented toward teachers of technical specialties wishing to navigate the modern features of the world of information technology, and further seeking to apply new approaches to the formation of educational programs. More than 500 attendees from all over Ukraine took part in the course.
The course covered the following topics:
- The IT market in Ukraine: national specifics of the business.
- How has the IT business changed over the last five years: opportunities and challenges.
- Outsourcing in the IT business: processes, stages and key players.
- Educational program as a project: how to take into account risks and calculate the budget.
- The most complicated fix-price project in my life.
- The development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and how it affects our lives.
- Soft skills for a teacher to develop.
- Emotional intelligence.
- The customer above all else.
- Brand formation and reputation management.
As a result of the course, teachers obtained the following skills:
- To develop and plan educational products: courses and programs.
- To consolidate business approaches to planning educational projects, in particular working with risks and budget calculations.
- To learn to work effectively with your own brand.
- To get to know the specificities of using emotional intelligence.
- To improve understanding of business processes in outsourcing models.
