The proposed project is aiming to enhance interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity in ICT education at the higher educational institutions in Russia and Kazakhstan. Both involved partner countries have inherited their higher education systems from Soviet Union, where the key feature was fundamental education and deep focus on technical skills, but which rarely involved sufficient interdisciplinary training or development of soft skills. As currently both interdisciplinarity and entrepreneurial soft skills become an important factor for labour market, and thus partner country universities require guidance in its development. While contemporary ICT-tools and pedagogical approaches are being widely implemented for hard skills development, in the sector of soft skills partner country universities are falling behind their EU counterparts.The project is achieving the proposed goal by developing and implementing IT-entrepreneurial module in the curricula of IT-majors on bachelor, master and PhD levels. The developed module includes ICT competence hard skills module, entrepreneurial soft skills module and acceleration block that are included in student curricula. The project also aims to develop assessment algorithm for measuring of entrepreneurial soft skills.
Project's objective wasto influence current situation by (1) development of interdisciplinary ICT-based entrepreneurial module for IT majors and (2) creation of sustainable inter-university platform to provide IT-entrepreneurship competence. This project would enhance practical oriented learning to ensure parallel development of soft skills (teamwork, communication) and hard skills (ICT competence), along with providing future employers student record on student soft skills development
Both Russian and Kazakhstan universities had separate entrepreneurship and technical BA, MA and PhD programmes. Thus IT majors lacked entrepreneurial skills leading to high failure ratio for digital startups. National governments had heavily invested in the entrepreneurial infrastructure in IT sphere, but lack of business development competences did not allow to use it efficiently. Thus the project aimed to create a module which would enhance entrepreneurial skills in IT curriculum
<< Background >> Both Russian and Kazakhstan universities had separate entrepreneurship and technical BA, MA and PhD programmes. Thus IT majors lacked entrepreneurial skills leading to high failure ratio for digital startups. National governments had heavily invested in the entrepreneurial infrastructure in IT sphere, but lack of business development competences did not allow to use it efficiently. Thus the project aimed to create a module which would enhance entrepreneurial skills in IT curriculum << Objectives >> Project's objective wasto influence current situation by (1) development of interdisciplinary ICT-based entrepreneurial module for IT majors and (2) creation of sustainable inter-university platform to provide IT-entrepreneurship competence. This project would enhance practical oriented learning to ensure parallel development of soft skills (teamwork, communication) and hard skills (ICT competence), along with providing future employers student record on student soft skills development << Implementation >> The project was implemented in 6 universities. Russian partners were excluded from the project due to Ukraine invasion in April 2022, and the project was finalized by EU-Kazakhstan partnership. Kazakhstan partners enrolled over 700 students both in entrepreneurial module as part of the their regular IT curriculum, and in acceleration programme activities which started by monthly hackathon in May 2020. The spin-off effects included 2 MOOCs, and a textbook on entrepreneurship for technical majors << Results >> As a result of the project the consortium developed 40 new courses for IT majors which were included in their regular curriculum. All the courses were accredited on national level. In total, 1900 students from 6 universities (BA,Ma and PhD levels) took the developed entrepreneurial module. 2 universities had developed full scale BA and MA programmes on the basis of the course, and 2 laboratories were opened in cooperation with industry partners from IT sphere. Acceleration programme was launched