Additional education
In addition to the main educational programs, the Civil Engineering Institute also offers additional professional education (APE) programs. According to Marina Petrochenko, the Institute came to the conclusion that a simple diploma with grades would not be enough for a young specialist: a future employer would not be able to assess his or her qualifications based on it. In addition, a steady demand for additional competencies in potential employees has already been formed from the employers themselves. Thus, it was decided that each graduate should also have an individual digital portfolio.
The portfolio includes the student's practical experience: participation in conferences, olympiads, project experience and professional competitions. As an example of one of such initiatives, the Director of the Institute cited a project for independent assessment of the qualifications of young specialists, organized with the participation of Pavel Balobanov, General Director of PSS GRAITEK. As part of the project, a certification program for BIM specialists was launched: as a result, two graduates of the Civil Engineering Institute - one in the specialist program and the other in the master's program - passed certification and received a document that will become part of their digital portfolio.
The new higher education program at the Civil Engineering Institute is based on 4 modules:
Professional module of construction disciplines
Digital Competencies Module
Module for the development of trans-professional competencies
Personal Competence Development Module
“We adhere to this model of the educational program because now projects are becoming very large and interdisciplinary, teams are growing, and specialists must be able to set tasks for each other and be able to accept these tasks from each other,” explained Marina Petrochenko.
The expert further noted that the Institute has been participating in the Digital Departments project for the third year as part of the Priority 2030 state program. This allows students to obtain additional qualifications in parallel with their first higher education and compensate for the problem of knowledge obsolescence that arises due to the length of its training. As part of the Digital Departments project, the Institute is implementing two programs: Programming for the BIM Platform and Artificial Intelligence in Construction.
"Here I would like to emphasize that we do not teach programmers and data scientists. We teach students to understand and speak the same language with programmers and data scientists, to be able to set them a task and accept the results of their work," the expert emphasized to the audience.
The structure of the additional education program itself includes 5 stages:
Competency diagnostics that help identify knowledge gaps and teach students only what they really need
Analysis of results and preparation of an individual training program
A student undergoing training according to an individual program
Independent assessment of qualifications from specialists outside the university
Inclusion in the National Register of Skills, allowing employers to see whether candidates meet the required skills in a publicly accessible source