Developing win-win solutions for virtual placements in informatics

Abstract

The placements and internships are one of the main paths to get professional background and some skills for students, especially in areas like informatics and computer sciences. The European-funded VALS project tries to promote the virtual placements and establish a new initiative in virtual placements called Semester of Code. This initiative binds higher education institutions, students, companies, foundations and Open Source projects in order to create virtual placements and solve needs that they have in relation with those placements. This paper introduces some projects about virtual placements that other institutions and companies perform, also the paper describes the needs, opinions and considerations about the virtual placements for each stakeholder involved in the placements, to finally explain the design decisions and actions behind the Semester of Code, and how they are intended to get better virtual placements and successful results.

Technological Ecosystems

“…The last paper presents a summary of the firsts results of the VALS (Virtual Alliances for Learning Society) European Project [30][31][32] about the experiences of Computer Engineering students performing virtual placements in open software companies all around the world [33,34].…”

Virtual Placements Management Process Supported by Technology: Proposal and First Results of the Semester of Code

“…This is crucial to clearly understand how the software that supports the process is designed and implemented [29]. Another important fundamental of the Semester of Code is the rewards system and its win-win approach that is applied in all possible processes included [14]. This rewards system is made to ensure that all those involved in the process receive something (tangible or intangible) related to the process in an intrinsic way (i.e., in the case of companies: the possibility of student interns to solve a real business problem) or extrinsically (i.e., concrete rewards: the university agree with the students an academic reward which depends on the rules of the university and the educational legislation of the country where practices are developed).…”

“…Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/RITA.2016.2518461, IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Technologias del Aprendizaje > REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < 2 students that study computer sciences and other related areas in European educational institutions, in a process regulated by establishing a system of rewards and non-economic compensations which benefits all stakeholders (a win-win approach) [14]. The programme that materializes this collaboration and student placements in companies is called Semester of Code [15] and it is one of the most outstanding tangible results of the project VALS.…”

Semester of Code: Piloting virtual placements for informatics across Europe

“…As previously explained, the Semester of Code is the practical extension of the VALS project, and is based on the ideas and features retrieved from previous projects, initiatives and guidelines not only in the scope of virtual placements, but in the scope of the Education on Informatics (in virtual or physical format) [10][11][12][13]. Also, this Semester of Code has been designed following win-win principles, so all possible stakeholders get valuable wins being involved in the initiative [14].…”

“…The VALS project has a EU-funded timeline extension of two years, so, after the study and the design of the virtual placements in the first year of the project (2013-2014), it is time to conduct the pilot tests (Semester of Code pilots). The pilots are composed by several phases, in order to make a clear process for the virtual placements, and involve several stakeholders [14,15]. Following are described the main stages of the Semester of Code pilots:…”