Whether you’ve been working for years or have just started your career, you’ll no doubt remember your very first day of work. Whatever the field, whatever the job, this kind of thing generally stays with a person.

Most likely, you’d just left university or college, and had been awarded a certificate at graduation, but what else did you take away from your time there? We’re going to take a wild guess and say a great deal of theory, books and exam notes. Are we right? Our next question would then be, how effective was this in preparing you for that first professional job?

Now that the world’s most rapidly evolving sector, the technology sector, is in great need of adequately skilled professionals with first rate practical experience, both students and employers are realising that traditional theory-based education is fatally flawed. Not only are there not enough candidates to fill such open positions in tech, those who have had an education in this field are often lacking in the practical experience that is required by the current job market.

What is "learn by doing" methodology?

At Ubiqum Code Academy we are trying to rectify this skills gap through our highly practical “learn by doing” methodology and immersive training programs. Proving to be extremely effective, the people who carry out our 5-month programs in web development or data analytics go on to get hired almost immediately after completing the program (if not before), amazed at just how much they’ve learned and how prepared they are to kick start their career in IT and technology.

How does the “learn by doing” practical methodology work?

Ubiqum’s programs are 100% student centred, meaning that the person enrolled on the program is in complete control of their learning, working autonomously on real projects they would find on the job. From day one they are given the role of Junior Web Developer or Data Analyst, thus giving them a strong sense of purpose and motivation. What’s more, we’ve seen, as have our Hiring Partners, that by learning in this way, students develop an amazing capacity for learning, taking it upon themselves to research new technologies and constantly update their existing knowledge.

Though our programs come with excellent mentor support from experts in the field, students tend to take on a whole new mental model and work hard to do as much as they can autonomously.

Some testimonies

Francesc Altes, hired as a Developer at GetApp after completing the Java Web Developer course at Ubiqum Code Academy explains:

“At university, I would spend four months studying a subject and never get to see the practical use of it. On Ubiqum’s Java program, in just a few weeks, I was already seeing the tangible results of what I was working on and this motivates you to no end. Unlike at uni, I will now go home or go to the library in my free time and learn more about a program or a programming language we’ve looked at on the course.”

Jordi Vidal, formerly a Customer Service Rep. in a telecommunications company, now a Java Developer, explains:

“I gave myself a personal challenge and that was to use the mentors as little as possible and to advance as much as I could by myself. Raül (a mentor) once looked at my history and it was incredible to see how much I’d evolved without much additional help from him or any of the other mentors.”

Do you want to try this methodology?

The fact that a safe space is created, where the notion of failure is non-existent, is incredibly powerful, thus encouraging students to play around with the tools they’re using and make mistakes in order to learn from them and not make them on the job. Furthermore, this act of making mistakes and ‘cracking it’ by yourself, really supports deep, long lasting knowledge, which is quite the opposite of exams and lectures.

If you’d like any more information on practical learning and all it’s benefits or you’d like to hear more about either of our courses, please get in touch by sending us an email to hello@ubiqum.com.