Case-Study-Built a Competitive Advantage for a Techno Management Education Institute by Aligning Academic Curriculum with Industrial Insights through a Customized Training Program

The Institute

Established in 1985, the institute is one of the 34 subsidiaries of a global conglomerate in the education vertical. Based out of a city known as ‘the oxford of the east’ – Pune, the institute is a leading Tier 1, AICTE accredited techno-management college. It extends two postgraduate degree courses (MBA-IT & M.Sc.-CA) and two undergraduate degree courses (BBA-IT and BCA).

Executive Summary

Today’s educational institutes are consistently working towards the best education practices so as to ensure their students command the best industrial exposure. To position themselves at the pinnacle of academic innovations, institutes need to continuously enhance their knowledge delivering mechanisms. The need for an educational institute to keep its students abreast of technological advancements in IT and ITES industries has never been more.

ZenSOFT Services assisted the institute to roll out a tailor-made training program which was designed to orient students towards the practical applications of IT in various other industry verticals. This modular program was successfully completed by setting up a software engineering lab with best of industry’s infrastructure and software, which was then followed by exhaustive customized class room training sessions conducted by a panel of certified industry veterans.

Business Case

The institute offers software engineering as a part of its curriculum in its postgraduate and undergraduate degree courses, which is taught by the in-house faculty. Keeping frequent attrition and lack of trained teachers in mind, the institute proactively wanted to ensure a sustained knowledge growth . In order to maintain its competitive edge, the institute wanted to reinvent ways of knowledge transfer so as to keep its students in tandem with the rapidly evolving IT industry. The institute was seeking a trusted technology partner who could help them maintain leadership in academic innovations and also transfer their much needed industry experience that students could easily absorb.

Goal (Challenge)

• Designing an accurate program for the institute that is inline with the university curriculum
• Strict adherence to university’s rules and regulations while designing the evaluation papers all the while ensuring stringent value assessment for competency building
• Ensuring regular addendum of latest events and developments occurring in the industry on an everyday basis into the training curriculum

Solution we provided

Having trained around 350 educational institutes across India, ZenSOFT has a healthy blend of domain and technical specialists to transform industry experience into comprehensible pieces of knowledge. ZenSOFT appointed a team of industry experts who were adept in training across the various stages of the SDLC. This team initiated the program by working closely with the management and faculty to identify various tools and technologies on which students should get trained. ZenSOFT team also mapped the institute’s current academic curriculum to their industry insight and crafted customized modules in order to bridge the gap.

• The program constituted an overview of Rational Suite and essentials on visual modeling through Rational Rose. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Unified Modeling Language (OOAD/UML) showcased the concepts and techniques necessary to effectively use system requirements captured in cases to drive the seamless development of a robust design model.
• The course was specially designed to optimize learning by exposing students to over 70% ‘hands-on’ time and 30% theoretical sessions.
• Through in-depth analysis of real life case studies, this hands-on workshop enabled students to apply UML fundamental to OOAD concepts, including architecture, objects, classes, components, stereotypes, relationships, and all supporting diagrams.
• The training program also emphasized on how a managed approach to requirements gathering contributes to project success and customer satisfaction.

Business Benefits

Besides bringing the client’s curriculum closer to the industry requirements, the client was also able to-

• Cost effectively set up a software engineering lab equipped with the best of industry’s infrastructure and software
• Produce industry ready resources
• Refine its brand in the educational fraternity
• Get a trusted value partner for future technology enablements

Technology

Following Automation tools were covered during the training

• Requite Pro for Requirement Management
• Rational Rose for Analysis and Design (OOAD)
• RUP
• Overview of other rational tools such RAD, Robot and RTM

Testimonial

We are pleased to inform you our appreciation for the training provided by your organization and its team of trainers in Jan-Feb 2008 in Object Oriented Analysis and Design and in the use of Rational Rose software to our students of MBA in information Technology.

The response of your team to our requests for solving any problem pertaining training or software has always been prompt and satisfactory.

The feedback of our students in terms of quality of training was encouraging and we trust ZenSOFT Services will continue to maintain high quality of services in future. We look forward to a long term and fruitful relationship…

…Prof. Arun Ghaisas, Head-MBA