Pilot project events 2013-2014

Pilot project events 2013-2014 (in framework of TEMPUS project tasks)

1. September 2013 – January 2014. Recruitment of participants into the pilot project announced and started.

One of the most important tasks of our project is to implement a pilot project for a real outsourcing partner of our customer’s project, “Malibu Sports.” As a result of this project, the participants will obtain experience in working on real projects for real clients, and the center of outsourcing will receive qualified personnel for the implementation of outsourcing projects for companies and customers in their future endeavors.

Such work of the outsourcing center will contribute to achieving the main objectives of the project – to increase students’ practical skills and participation of teachers in solving practical problems that are required by enterprises and companies of Ukraine. This approach to learning will reduce the shortage of highly skilled IT developers, and will enable students to acquire practical skills in the implementation of outsourcing projects even during their training in universities.
Project Coordinator Natalia Bilous with employees of the center held meetings with students, which provided information about the project IHSITOP, activities to be carried out and how students, staff and other interested parties can participate and learn in our project.
For preview the following materials were given:
– a summary of the project with a list of all references to information sources (http://nure.ua/uk/university/international-cooperation/ects/proekt-ihsitop/, http://ostpcen.wordpress.com/),
– hard copy of the questionnaire to be filled in before participating in the pilot project. The questionnaire contained the key issues for the selection of the participants related to the definition of their professional and personal skills needed for further participation in the project.
Over 550 students from KNURE and other educational institutions of Kharkiv attended survey.

2. January 2014 – March 2014. Electronic questioning of candidates for the pilot project.

A message with a link to the site OSTPC http://ostpc.org.ua/ for filling in on-line questionnaire was sent to all registered participants of the project by e-mail. Candidates were to complete two questionnaires: Basic Questionnaire and Trainee Questionnaire. The
first questionnaire contains information about the personal data of the participants, such as name, date of birth, city and country, as well as their preferences, goals for the implementation of their professional qualities in the pilot project and future work.

The second questionnaire contains questions related to skills and knowledge including language command (is not possible to participate in an international project without knowledge of English). A separate section of this questionnaire was dedicated to questions about the personal qualities and life goals. According to these qualities, it is possible to deduce the ability of the participants to bring work to the end, or the ability work in a team (the pilot project requires the ability to work in a team). In general, participants made the profile to consider their knowledge, abilities, and also about whether they can perform real outsourcing projects. Based on the survey results, this phase was passed by 216 people.

3. 10.03.2014 – 13.04.2014. Testing of students candidates to participate in the pilot project.

Participants who had successfully signed up and filled out the questionnaires, were then tested on the subject of the pilot project. For 60 minutes, students had to cope with twenty-five test tasks in English, which were randomly selected from the database. Testing
included basic knowledge of programming in Java, PHP, as well as the a bility to work with HTML and CSS. Level of questions was above the knowledge baseline. Questions included tests of different types. This stage was the most difficult, so only 87 people passed.

4. 14.04.2014 – 15.05.2014 Interview for students and teachers selection for the pilot project.

In the room of the center (№ 455a) students and teachers were interviewed with the help of specialists from Obuda University (Hungary) and IT-specialists from Kharkov. The interview took place in the form of a Skype-conference. 46 students who had successfully completed testing were selected for the interview , and 9 teachers were pre-selected by their profiles. Three experts from Obuda University spoke with potential candidates by turns.

Interview questions consisted of psychological, behavioral and professional questions as well as questions related to software development methodology. Due to the professionalism of experts 19 students and 4 teachers were selected for further work.

5. 25.05.2014-04.07.2014.

To solve the problems of the pilot project, the teachers who were selected for the pilot project, developed and agreed with “Malibu Sport”, our project partner, the technical demands. Selected participants were invited to lectures on the implementation of the objectives of the pilot project.

Lectures were held on the following topics:
– “Working with databases” (Maxim Kernosov),
– «Java development» (Alexander Hryapkin and Yuriy Mishcheryakov),
– “Web-based applications development” (Oleksii Prohonnyi).

During the lecture, participants were given the materials for further work on the developed technical demands. For the final selection of students for Summer School in Odessa, participants were given the following tasks: 2 tasks on databases, 2 tasks on Java, 2 tasks for working with Web-based applications. Teachers checked students’ solutions. The results of the tasks determined the team to participate in the Summer School.

6. 05.07.2014-20.07.2014. Summer school, TEMPUS project, Odessa, ONPU, July 2014

A team of 7 people arrived in Odessa on the 6 th of July. They were settled in ONPU preventorium. The official opening of Summer School took place on the 7th of July. At the ceremony the participants were greeted by the key figures of the project: grantholder Gunter Tolkiehn, coordinator for Ukraine and KNURE Natalia Bilous, coordinator of ONPU Svetlana Antoschuk, a representative from Austria Patrick Grausberg and others.

Each student was given a presentation kit. On the same day, the first lecture by Professor Tolkiehn dedicated to IToutsourcing was held. Until the 11th of July lectures were held directly in ONPU. Students listened to lectures on ethical hacking, document management, internet marketing, analytic SQL-functions, GWT (GoogleWebToolkit) and many other IT topics. On the 11th of July students moved to the recreation camp of
ONPU “Chayka.”

In “Chayka” students had the opportunity to combine an active beach vacation with lectures and tasks implementation of the pilot project. During the week, the students listened to lectures on the following topics: UML-diagrams, introduction to testing, the development of Android-applications, work with RaspberryPi, NFC-technology, DAO and MVC patterns.

At the end of the summer school, students were engaged in the implementation of pilot project tasks. At the closing ceremony of the Summer School, each team made a presentation to their implementation of the pilot project outsourcing as well as objectives and approaches to their solution. Thereafter, the participants were given certificates and souvenirs from grant-holder.

On the 21st of July Kharkov team returned home and since the 23d of July the students got continuously engaged in the implementation of pilot project tasks.