Electronic "doors", virtual CASE-IN

Chatbot, TPU coins, and webinars

TPU Open Days — a large-scale event that allows applicants to get acquainted with various aspects of university life. What measures did the organizers have to take this year? Firstly, the 2020 Open Days have become much longer: from March 17 to April 12. Secondly, the developments in the field of digitalization have helped a lot.

— Today we are implementing the project "Digital Admissions 5.0", which combines the following main digital resources: website abiturient.tpu.ru , groups in social networks, chatbots, mobile application "Abiturent TPU", IPK "Abiturent TPU", CRM system "Abiturent TPU", LMS Moodle TPU system, integrated with a proctoring system that allows conducting Olympiads and entrance tests in a remote format. All this allows us to keep up with the times — to be closer to applicants and conduct the admission campaign more effectively in the current conditions, when the applicant left the offline environment," says Pavel Rvalov, head of the recruitment department.

The program of digital Open Days at TPU includes interesting questions on physics, mathematics, the history of TPU, and engineering from the official chatbot on the Vkontakte social network, the opportunity to earn virtual currency TPU coins, which can be exchanged for souvenirs upon admission to Tomsk Polytechnic University, and an online course on Future Engineering and the webinar "Admission 2020", which will be held on April 12. And most importantly, by participating in the events of the Open Days, you can earn up to five additional points for the Unified State Exam upon admission to TPU. And the organizers say that the guys are interested!

— The TPU Open Days "opened" online on March 17, and after 2 days the number of participants was more than 1.6 thousand people! In terms of maximum reach, the online format is, of course, limitless! For example: last year, we could invite up to 500 people to the Open Days at the International Cultural Center. And the Open Days are not over yet: the most important event where we will summarize all the results and answer all the questions that concern the children and their parents will be the webinar on April 12,?— Pavel Rvalov emphasizes.

It allows the online format to respond more quickly to applicants' requests, as students can ask their questions when it is convenient for them, at any time of the day or night. And modern technologies and technical infrastructure of TPU allow them to receive answers quickly.

— But the main thing, of course, is the team that is currently organizing recruitment at TPU. These are talented people who can move mountains for our university! These are the students themselves, the student volunteers, the staff, and the graduates. They offer a lot of creative and relevant ideas, which, thanks to the support of the university administration, are quickly and effectively implemented. Therefore, here we are certainly ahead of many colleagues from other universities and moving forward at 5G speeds," says the expert.

"CASE-IN"-2020 in online format — as it was

The International engineering Championship "CASE-IN"?— the largest federal competition for solving engineering cases of fuel and energy and mineral resource complexes. The main season of the championship in two leagues (Student and Young Professionals League) runs from February to May. The largest league, the Student League, is held in more than 50 universities in Russia and other CIS countries. And this year, TPU was supposed to become the largest venue for the championship, bringing together participants and experts in five areas of the Student League (exploration, oil and gas, petrochemistry, digital atom, electric power industry) and the League of Young Professionals. But the situation with the spread of coronavirus infection has made its own adjustments.…

— The preparation for the championship begins six months before the upcoming season, universities receive information sometime in November-December. And the joint work begins, which uses methodological recommendations, including about 120 points. The qualifying stages at TPU were supposed to take place on March 18. Preparations for the event began immediately after the New Year holidays. On March 6, the participants received cases on the directions, everything and everywhere was discussed, everything seemed to be going according to plan… But in a matter of days, everything has changed radically. And on the morning of March 16, the TPU management decided to cancel offline events due to the transition to distance learning," says Elena Vorontsova, the organizer of the CASE-IN at TPU, head of the Strategic Partnership Department. Together with the organizing committee of the championship, it was decided to hold the defenses in an online format. So, on March 18, the day when the qualifying stages were supposed to take place, the teams sent their final presentations to the organizing committee. The Reliable Shift Charitable Foundation took over the case protection webinars. On March 25 and 27, defenses were held in all areas of the Student League.

— 45 teams from TPU, TIU, KuzSTU and MEPhI defended their decisions within 6 minutes, and 44 experts asked from three to five questions to each team in accordance with the rules of the championship, — says Elena Vorontsova. As a result, the Tomsk Polytechnic University student teams became the winners: in the field of "Geological Exploration" — the Carbon team (Vlada Yeremeeva, Elena Vodina, Alexandra Churakova, ISHPR), "Oil and Gas business" — Winbound (Anatoly Andreev, Mikhail Kulakov, Vladislav Laskach, Vladislav Gaevoy, ISHPR), "Petrochemistry"?— "Triad" (Daria Afanasyeva, Ulyana Kopycheva, Marina Davydenko, ISHPR), "Digital Atom" — "Mona Lisa's Smile" (Alina Khizhnyak, Kirill Chernyugov, Salokhiddin Rakhmonkulov, Alexey Leonov, IATSH), "Electric Power Industry" — "Tomsk Machines" (Anna Darkhanova, Artyom Zhilenkov, Yulia Pitko, Maltsev Alexey, ISHE).

— Our team has been participating in the championship for several years, but this is the first time we have encountered such a format. Of course, at first it caused fear and doubts about whether we would be able to cope, whether there would be technical and other problems. But as a result, everything went at a decent level. In the current situation, we are pleased with the efficiency of the organizers, who were able to bring such a large-scale championship online in such a short time. All the teams had the opportunity to ask for help and explanations almost 24/7," shared Yulia Pitko, a member of the Tomsk Machines team.

— This format is unusual for us, but it is something new and interesting. We are glad that the organizers of the "CASE-IN" found a way out of the current situation and did not cancel the protection, but quickly switched to an online format. The presentation in the webinar format is very different from the one we are used to. We had to quickly change the accents of the speech, for example, from gestures to clear, well-delivered speech. It is also worth noting the high level of professionalism of the experts and all the participants," says Alexandra Churakova from the Carbon team.

Prepared by Natalia Karakorskova

A source: TPU