A successful case of the Digital Department of Altai State University on interaction with IT companies was presented at the Altai IT Forum

The section “I would like to become an IT specialist, teach me” was devoted to the problems of training IT personnel in the region. The section was moderated by Svetlana Belova, Director of special projects at IT Channel News. Representatives of IT companies, educational organizations, and government bodies were invited to the section as speakers. Reports on the training of IT personnel and trends in IT education were made by Yaroslav Korolenko, Director of the Siberian Macroregional Center SKB Kontur, and German Klimenko, Chairman of the Board of the Digital Economy Development Fund.

Altai State University was represented by Olga Krotova, Head of the Digital Department of Altai State University. As part of her report, she spoke about the activities of the Digital Department, ongoing retraining programs and interaction with IT companies.

“The Digital Department of Altai State University is a unique project for Altai Krai, which is supervised by the First Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs Evgenia Zhdanova. It involves representatives of 14 IT companies not only at the regional, but also at the all-Russian level (Estesis LLC, DBA LLC, Sitronics JSC, 1C-Galex LLC, Solarlab LLC, Freematic LLC, Seasort, Premier LLC, Alemar LLC, BSKB Vostok JSC, Integra Sources LLC, Academy of Medical Technology LLC, 21 Century Soft LLC, IE Stepanov A.S. (IT company "Rank")). Project partners participate in the process of personnel training at all stages of training; they jointly develop retraining programs, adapted to the needs and technology stack of companies, practitioners participate in the educational process – conduct classes, provide students with real cases, supervise the implementation of projects, organize meetups, workshops and open lectures on the topics of the additional professional education programs,” says Olga Krotova.

The Digital Department provides an opportunity for students from different areas of training to acquire in-demand IT competencies, which the student can subsequently apply in professional tasks. Involving IT companies in the learning process allows students to gain up-to-date knowledge and skills, get acquainted with the process of creating IT products, learn to work in a team, and immerse themselves in the corporate environment even at the training stage.

Based on the results of the first year of the project, our students achieved significant results: they developed their own IT and cross-industry projects and received offers from partner companies.