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Customer Story

Learning Journeys for University Lecturers

Amsterdam University of Applied Science needed to scale the number of qualified teachers from 3 to 35 within one year

Related services
Data

Industry
Public | Utilities

Company
Xebia

The Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) educates tomorrow’s professionals in a wide array of fields and disciplines of higher education. With its focus on applied sciences, the AUAS enables students, lecturers and researchers to develop cutting-edge – and practical – knowledge and innovations.

Why
The university needed to scale the number of qualified teachers from 3 to 35 within one year
What
Three-month program for lecturers providing hands-on data science & analytics translator learning
How
Lecturers who are ready to confidently teach students about AI, data science, and IoT

A Custom Train-the-Trainer Program

The Amsterdam University of Applied Science (Faculty of Technology) has the obligation to teach its students about the latest technologies, be it AI, IoT (Internet of Things), drones, or energy innovations. As such, they cannot afford to linger in the digital transformation. Last year, the University set up a plan to scale-up its Data Science learning center from 30 to 200 students per year. This, of course, requires the University to train its trainers well before the student.

“A selected group of 35 lectures and researchers applied for a position to be part of our train the trainer program. In this program we aim to deliver top-notch skilled lectures. You must know that probably lecturers are the worst type of students!”

Objectives of the Learning Program

The University created a list of requirements for this learning program. Most important objectives were:

  1. The participants should be engaged with AI
  2. The content of the course contains the latest insights from real-world practices
  3. The content of the full study program should be flexibly set-up

To be quite honest, not many companies are able to comply with all three requirements. Moreover, we were looking for a more structural collaboration rather than a one-off. In Xebia, we found a partner that has the authority in AI in its veins. With full confidence we can put their trainers in front of this difficult audience. But Xebia not only appeared to be a source of insights: they also helped us with the design of the program.

Program Design

The program was designed to empower experienced lecturers to teach students what is important when working on data & AI use cases. The program starts with an analytics translator course. It is then followed by an intense tour of Python for Data Analysis — especially pandas and various plotting libraries in the ecosystem. It continues with Python for Machine Learning sessions, with an emphasis on scikit-learn.

After mastering the tools, the program continues with an in-depth series of lectures. They cover linear programming, time series analysis and forecasting, A/B testing, and Bayesian modeling.

At the end of this three months program, the lecturers are ready to engage with the students. The hands-on knowledge gained allows them to be confident in front of the most challenging classes.

Continued Collaboration

The University sees Xebia as a sparring partner for future projects as well. An example is a subsidiy program for data science projects in the industrial sector.

"To prepare our lecturers for a growing demand of AI classes, we asked Xebia to develop an AI learning program. This tailor-made program provides us with a huge head start along our learning journey.
logo amsterdam uas
Jurjen Helmus Coordinator Minor Data Science

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