Progress curriculum at Tallinn Technical University
The first semester of Progress Technologies in Tallinn University of
Techology (TUT) as part of curriculum has finished successfully. The
course “Developing business critical systems using Progress Technology” started in September 2016.
Few words how it all started and what we finally delivered.
It all began in November 2015 when we offered to the university, that
we could do a 2-3h seminar to introduce Progress Technologies to the students. The responce from the university was surprising, they asked us to lecture a full semester for the masters degree, worth 5EAP or 10EAP, ending with the exam.
We definitely liked the idea, but in the beginning it was in a way a
challenge, because we needed to find time and materials and most
importantly - lecturers! We had a great opportunity to design a
curriculum, because we wanted it to be maximum value for the students.
What was clear from the beginning was the fact, that it should have
balance between the theory and the practice. Looking back, it was interesting and fun process. Since 10EAP seemed too much for first try, we went for the 5EAP version. But even 5EAP meant, we had to fill 15 weeks! with lectures and practicum, and also come up with homework and exam. We contacted Progress Academy to learn from their experiences and we received product materials from Progress Software. Still we ended up making our own materials since the curriculum was in Estonian language.
The whole process took almost 2 years, during that time we had internal brainstorms and many meetings with the university.
Fortunately we found all the lectors from our own local Progress
community. In voluntary bases our coworkers and friends from Helmes and SEB were ready to share their knowledge with students. We hereby would like to thank Helmes employees Lauri Greenbaum, Kristjan Karp and Chris Kokka, and SEB employees Heino Talvik and Veronika Repnau. The initial idea came from Kristi Pool Business Area Manager at Helmes. Since March 2016 the project was lead by Liis Vanem Team Lead at Helmes.
During the semester there were 42 students participating, both in daily and distance learning. University project was popular not only among students, even developers at companies using Progress in daily basis visited lectures.
Our main focus during Progress curriculum was on OE ABL, the database, OO, REST, Sonic, Kendo.U builder, Coticon and other Progress products.
About half way through the semester we invited Jarmo Nieminen from Finland to do the 4h workshop about KendoUI and Telerik Mobile. Jarmos workshop got a lot of positive feedback from Technical University students. We also had a fun activity, which consisted of programming the logic for the game "Othello" and then let students code play against each other. The winner of the Othello game got better grade.
For the exam, students coded a webshop backend in OE AbL. However we did not restrict the technology for front end and as the end result we had a variety of solutions from .NET and KendoUI Builder to just postman calls.
Statistically the average grade was 4.
Its time to celebrate, it was a fantastic experience. There is a
saying, that person does not fully understand something, before he/she is able to teach it to someone else. We all have gone thru this process and perhaps now we can say we truly know what Progress technology is about 
:-) Students were eager to learn, smart and excited and we are looking forward for the next autumn. The contract currently is signed for the next 2 autumns and if you would like to contribute as a lecturer, then please contact Liis Vanem liis.vanem@helmes.ee.