Motivation + soft skills = foundation for success 

To get into the country's leading universities, school students have to demonstrate solid knowledge and good grades, i.e. high Unified State Exam scores and contest wins. However, according to Alexander Mayatin, the executive director of ITMO’s Information Technologies and Programming Faculty, those who excel in school don’t always continue to do so at university. In order to become a leader, it’s important to practice your soft skills, including maintaining motivation, employing learning techniques, completing your tasks, managing your time and your team, and taking responsibility:

“Students’ initial abilities do affect their success, and we as teachers need to be able to use that wisely by separating students into groups, assigning them the right lecturers, managing the curriculum and teaching methods, and allowing students to choose their courses, tracks, and specializations. Then, all students will have equal opportunities to achieve great results and become leaders. But it’s important to remember that for students to graduate from universities, they will need motivation and willingness to work and achieve results,” says Alexander Mayatin.

At the Information Technologies and Programming Faculty, students learn to work in teams and help each other, as these abilities will be handy not only in their studies, but also in the IT industry. Several courses also have students split into teams and work on full-scale products – this format allows every student to try on various roles, including leading a small team, to see what fits them best.

Educational environment for growth

Personal development alone isn’t enough to become a leader. It’s important to put future leaders in an environment where they can prove themselves regardless of their initial skills. Universities can provide just such an environment.

A new model for role-learning

Trends in AI and IT change constantly, with professional standards not always able to keep up. Instead, ITMO experts suggest using a role-based competency model for education in AI. Thanks to that, students will be able to flexibly learn the roles, competencies, and technologies needed on the market and thus grow at the intersection of several roles, not within just one profession.

For instance, in the Bachelor’s program Neurotechnologies and Programming, students learn three roles – data, ML, and MLOps engineer, while in the Master’s program Design and Development of AI Systems, students learn two – ML engineer and AI systems architect.

In these programs, students attend the same basic courses and gain additional competencies for their roles within elective courses.

For the IT field as a whole, ITMO experts have developed a domain-role categorical model. It covers four domains: software development, infrastructure management, data, and cross-cutting processes. Each domain is divided into subdomains and roles. For example, the subdomain of client application development includes the roles of frontend developer, mobile developer, and UI/UX designer. In turn, universal competencies and tools that a specialist must possess are defined for each role. Moreover, there are several levels of proficiency: applied (the specialist can use the tool or quickly get acquainted with it), systemic (can create a product from multiple tools), and fundamental (understands how the technology, product, or tool is structured and can create new ones).

Learning fundamentals

IT and AI technologies change almost every week. At ITMO, experts believe that instead of learning to work with a particular program, students should master a mode of thinking that allows them to understand why and how certain software was created. If students understand how a problem arose and why it must be solved and are also able to evaluate previous solutions with their shortcomings, they will be able to tackle any problem and produce a suitable solution for it.

“AI and IT students spend four years in their Bachelor’s programs, but it’s impossible to predict which technologies and tools will be relevant by the time they graduate – they change nearly weekly. That’s why our programs need to teach technological foundations while also equipping our students with the ability to flexibly adjust to new technologies during their studies, as well as familiarize themselves with professional literature and databases. This will be an additional factor for ensuring top training,” shares Alexander Kugaevskikh, an associate professor at the Faculty of Software Engineering and Computer Systems.

At ITMO, focus is also laid on mathematical training. According to Dr. Kugaevskikh, students in the first two years study math in-depth while also learning about existing AI technologies. In their third year, students use their knowledge of math formulas to understand neural networks and other tools, while in their fourth year this background helps them tackle complex “frontier science” courses and understand AI systems in general.

Support for extracurricular activities 

Apart from practical classes, students may take part in hackathons where they can gain professional experience and try themselves as leaders. Another opportunity to boost hard skills is to join student clubs in infosec, gamedev, open-source software development, and web apps. The full list of ITMO student clubs can be found here.

Lecturers are key

It would be impossible to create a top educational program and an environment for leaders without a strong team of lecturers. Therefore, it’s important to grow such a team attentively, as leaders among students. At ITMO, this priority is covered by the ITMO.Mentors project. Within it, fourth-year students of the Information Technologies and Programming Faculty study pedagogy fundamentals and assist lecturers with classes and grading assignments while also gaining practical working experience through internships or working at IT companies. This way, young mentors can grow as both lecturers and industry professionals.

Each course has a team of 10-20 lecturers that are managed by a lead, like at an IT company. This team lead has both teaching experience at ITMO and industrial experience; they know what’s trending and what will be asked of young professionals. Leads develop their courses as educational products: they decide on its development trajectory, choose experts from industrial companies and mentors from among students, collect feedback from students in the course, and synchronize their course with others on offer. As a result, ITMO students acquire in-demand skills by solving real-world cases.

The discussion How to Train Top Specialists for Technological Leadership was conducted by Alexander Mayatin and Alexander Kutaevskikh and moderated by Olga Eliseeva, the deputy head of ITMO’s Department of Academic Affairs and head of the strategic goal ITMO Graduates for Technological Leadership of ITMO’s Development Strategy. You can watch the discussion in full here (in Russian). The annual intensive course is held by ITMO’s Department for Educational Affairs. This year, it attracted 47 speakers from ITMO, Sberbank, Moscow Innovation Cluster, HSE University, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow Polytechnic University, Ural Federal University, Tyumen State University, and Don State Technical University.