Hi Ravindra,
I wanted to share one of the recent activities that we as a group of industry professionals have taken up. We call this as "Peepaal – Continuous Community Learning".
In some of our recent engagements with multiple Computer Science colleges in areas like teaching, conducting mock interviews, evaluating degree projects etc. We realized that there is a fair amount of expectation mismatch between Industry and students.
In an effort to bridge this gap and contribute something back to the campus we have came up with an initiative called Peepaal.
Objectives
Following are some of the main objectives of our Peepaal initiative:
· Establish a strong collaboration between campus and the industry.
· Establish a strong collaboration between various campuses.
· Provide education to the students in an easy to understand format.
· Extend the way education is imparted to students by giving them insight into latest trends and technologies.
· Our ultimate goal is to make our student community compete with the best in the world.
o We need to provide them with the guidance that we did not get during our times and had to reinvent the wheel.
o Armed with good guidance we envision our students innovating applications that will have profound effect on the community.
From our interactions with students through multiple channels we found following problem areas:
· Weak in core competencies (OOPS/Data Structures/Algorithms/DBMS)
· Outdated project Ideas
o Still working on decade old college projects prevalent in our college days.
o Missing R&D & Innovation element.
o Lack of awareness about current technology trends.
o Incomplete project implementation.
· Lack of good interpersonal skills.
In an effort to fix the above mentioned problem areas, we have a come up with a blended model where instead of just doing a final evaluation of projects for the students. We are looking at engaging with the students on a continuous basis (an online model) as well as at intermediate milestones within their project lifecycle.
Online Portal
We are a engaging with students on a continuous basis using our online community portal http://www.peepaal.org/campus.
Following are some of the key aspects of the portal:
· Provides the student community a platform to communicate/interact with the industry professionals as well as among them through the medium of discussion forums/ chats.
· Updates the students about the currents industry trends via technical blogs/easy to read comic strips from the industry experts.
· Helps students identify the most needed technical & interpersonal skills.
Offline Events – Project Barcamp
We plan to engage with the students in an offline mode at the following milestones during the project life cycle:
· Idea Camp is a BarCamp styled Idea review session where the industry participants will review the project ideas based on a set of key parameters. Focus of the camp is to validate the Idea, feasibility & Innovation component and clarity of the project idea.
· BootCamp is an intermediate camp which is intended to serve as a mid project checkpoint to validate two aspects Design of the Solution and Progress on the Project. A key parameter for evaluating the BootCamp projects is the ability to demonstrate a POC version of the project.
· LaunchCamp is the final session intended to validate the completed Student Projects. Students are expected to showcase the final version of their projects with screenshots/demos and/or presentation of their project. The focus of this session is the ability of students to be able to successfully showcase their work and highlight a good understanding of the technology and the benefits of the solution.
Linked In Community
We have also setup a linked in community which is a community open to all industry professionals who would like to get involved in the initiative. We plan to use this community to announce the various initiatives we have planned and discuss and debate the initiative and provide a forum for feedback so that we can further grow the program.
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1454357/1D32262ADD49
How you can help
Clearly with our exposure to fewer technologies & limited bandwidth, in order to sustain this & grow this community/initiative we would require support more people from the industry.
Since this initiative is a 100% voluntary effort we do understand if you are unable to spend too much time, at the same time any time that you can devote either online or offline can have a significant impact on a number of students looking for help.
Here is some help that we are looking forward to, from you:
· Visit the site http://www.peepaal.org/campus.
· Register on the site as industry professionals.
· Answer questions on the forums in the technology areas that you are comfortable in. (whenever you get some free time)
· You can contribute articles to the site. (whenever you get free time)
o Technical.
o Non technical.
o Your experiences.
o Any other thing you consider will be useful to the students.
· If possible join us for evaluations in offline mode.(we conduct these sessions on Saturday's first half)
· Give feedback on the technology channels & comic strips.
· Provide general feedback about what you think are the weaknesses / strengths / bugs in the site.
o Please don't hesitate to mention things that you did not like. I am sure there will be many.
o Each comment is valuable :)
This site is still under development so you may see major UI changes even while you are browsing the site. Please bear with us on this :).
Some colleges that we are currently working with: Fergusson, Modern, Nowrosjee Wadia, and Garware
Some of the key contributors to the initiative are: Kaushik Raghupathi, Tarun Rathor, Vishal Pai, Shyamal Pandya ,Anoop Kunchukuttan ,Sanjeev Singh. We hope you can join our list of contributors as well J
Please spread the word and share about this initiative and make our Tribe grow.
Regards,
Peepaal
For any queries please feel free to contact us @ prkaushik@gmail.com, tarunjr@gmail.com, vishalpv@gmail.com, shyamal.pandya@gmail.com
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