"Here you’ll learn how to learn." Vera Koliverda shares her unique study experience at the EPITECH School of Digital Innovation in Paris.
Vera Koliverda, a third-year undergraduate student of the Business Informatics program, took part in a student exchange internship at the private university EPITECH in Paris, which has been training IT specialists for over 20 years and is recognized as a respected school of digital technology expertise. For Vera, this experience was quite unusual — a complete immersion into a project-based learning system with a supervisor, without any lectures or seminars.
Hi! My name is Vera Koliverda, and I’m a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Business Informatics. I spent the fall semester in Paris through an academic mobility program at EPITECH — officially called the Paris School of Digital Innovation.
At the end of the semester, I can confidently say that I improved my skills in many areas: programming, English and French, and — even though it may sound cliché — communication skills, which are just as important. EPITECH was a completely new educational experience for me, as it has nothing in common with traditional universities — especially HSE. Let me explain in more detail.
The main thing to know about EPITECH is that all learning is based on the principle of project-based learning. There are no lectures or seminars at all. This university doesn’t teach you how to write the “correct” code or how to work in a team — it teaches you how to learn.
The learning process follows a specific format. At the beginning of each project, instructors give a brief presentation of the assignment and answer questions — but this information is not enough to complete the task. The main work starts later: you have to do a lot of independent searching — watching tutorials, reading articles and documentation. This system is used for nearly every subject.
During each project, there are follow-up sessions with assistants. They assess progress and help with any issues. Essentially, assistants replace teachers: you can go to them and ask questions at any point during the project.
Adapting to this system wasn’t easy — especially at the beginning, when I had no idea what was going on. The semester started with something called a “pool” in the C programming language. It was two and a half weeks of intense tasks: every day we spent from morning till night at the university, and attendance was recorded twice a day. This stage could be considered a sort of “initiation into EPITECH.” Despite my previous programming experience, it was quite tough. All the projects that followed were less intense and had a more flexible schedule.
The EPITECH campus is mainly a large open space where students work on laptops. There are also separate classrooms, but you have to book them, so we mostly worked in the shared space. EPITECH is part of the IONIS education group along with other universities, so you often see students from other schools on campus.
Despite some organizational challenges, the semester turned out to be very rewarding. The mobility coordinators supported us and were always available. It was a cool and meaningful life experience!
