What type of courses are you offering?

NIT Academy offers courses and upskill programs in computer engineering. Areas covered are those that are usually considered hard to master, require significant effort or professional help. This is exactly where NIT Academy comes in. For example:

1. Programming courses prepare teams and individuals to program systems and devices in complex environments, using programming languages such as C, C++ or Rust. Software running in specific environments, such as infotainment systems in vehicles, TVs and media players, or IoT environments, requires specific know-how of under-the-hood Android or Python.
2. Software engineering is among the youngest disciplines but often wrongfully equated with Programming. Many additional, advanced concepts need to be mastered to craft software right, such as project management methodologies, agile development, test-driven development and DevOps. Specific tools need to be understood, such as those to keep the code in check or to comprehensively test user interfaces. Finally, specific know-how beyond software is essential to craft useful products, such as artificial intelligence or detailed user experience design.
3. Embedded software engineering is a stronghold of NIT Academy, where we bring all the know-how needed to program the modern devices and systems, powering mobile devices, cars, factories or alike. This software requires knowing the intrinsics of kernel programming for Linux, media distribution and processing pipelines, image acquisition and processing, IoT and edge architectures and protocols, digital IC verification, and more.
4. Automotive engineering is an appealing modern area where embedded software is brought to the max. At NIT Academy, we teach everything needed to code for cars: most modern vehicle frameworks, protocols, cybersecurity and safety standards, as well as testing vehicle ECUs.
5. System safety, functional safety and cybersecurity courses are the missing building blocks to program for next-generation industries, which are safety and security critical, such as vehicles, factories or smart cities. We offer plethora of trainings to cover the required standards, architecture and software development paradigm for critical systems.

Who is eligible for NIT Academy courses?

You can find the requirements for every course on our website or the prior knowledge we expect you to have when entering one of NIT Academy's courses. If someone doesn't have formal education but still wants to get into one of our courses, we will be there along the way for help and guidance.

How NIT Academy courses look like?

NIT Academy provides a unique learning experience for course participants, unlike any other lifelong education option out there. Here's how it typically goes:

• You can enroll to an open instance (accepting any individual participant) using our public calendar or to a custom instance arranged by your employer. Many employers work with NIT Academy to offer custom-scheduled courses for their employees, so you can check with your team lead or HR department if there are any custom enrollment options.
• Once enrolled, you get the access to NIT Academy Canvas LMS, where all modules, lectures and discussions happen. You also get access to the calendar of live meetings which are going to be scheduled by the expert instructor.
• Depending on course format, you can expect to have several live meeting sessions per week (at least one, but also up to five, depending on the pace and size of the course). Each session will last for 1-2 hours and it is usually in the afternoon.
• Live sessions are all about hands-on work. No ex-cathedra lecturing there. You come, team up with your pears, work out well-crafted problems, present and discuss. You learn during each live session actively. You become able to apply the knowledge immediately. Instructors give you insights to real-world problems and hints coming from their practical experience.
• All topic introductions are prepared for you as short digest video lectures. Before coming to the live session, you watch a digest video in the morning, over the morning coffee, instead of flicking through news. This is an activity of 30 minutes or so that warms you up for the brain-intensive activities happening in the afternoon live session.
• Two or three weeks into the course, the tables turn. Your team is given a project to work out on your own. The instructor is there to mentor and help. When the project is done, you submit it and then present live in front of the instructor. Instructor will comment and discuss your solution with you. As with any hands-on activity, all comments you will also get in writing after the class.
• After four or five weeks, and anywhere from 15 to 45 hours of your effort (live classes and self-paced work combined, depending on the course), you will be ready to take the examination and see your outcomes. The exam is optional, but based on the exam result we can issue a completion certificate that is valid for life.
• Rest assured that the know-how you obtain during a course is applicable immediately. If you already work with a company, go and embark confidently to your next project. If you are an individual, we will guide you to find work after the course. We have many great industry contacts to start with.

Are there different course formats and flavours?

NIT Academy open courses, accessible via our public calendar, are all administered online. But this is not a bad thing - all participants and instructors keep their cameras on, and split to groups to work out problems together and discuss actively. There are no sessions in which we talk, talk, talk and during which you can go pick up groceries or walk the dog with the phone in your pocket. Those sessions resemble active online meetings in which concentration and active presence is mandated. Our experts highly value their time so we think the same of our participants - when we are together in a meeting, we better work, discuss and learn. We call those course experiences Live Online.

Custom-ordered course instances can have more flexible formats, discussed with each company separately. For example:

• Live online which are very similar to our open courses. Companies may choose custom days and times for the live sessions, to skip essential worktime or days of other meetings, releases or work pressure. We can also agree to stretch-out material so that we have less frequent live sessions and finish the course in e.g. 8 weeks instead of 4 weeks, what makes the pace more relaxed and more suitable for some employees.
• Live on-site courses can happen in the classroom. The teaching style is the same as with live online courses, but instead of group discussions in the Google Meet breakout rooms, we use physical round tables. Upside of this format is the ability to more frequently discuss with the instructor and to converge faster towards the solution of a problem. Downside can be the intensity, since this format is usually organized as a bootcamp and the complete course can be delivered in 1-2 weeks what makes the new skill harder to settle.
• Hybrid courses are a special treat - we start the course as live on-site, for the first 1-5 days, where we get to meet each participant, to create bonds and trust. Then, we continue as live online. This model brings the best of both previous models. The only downside is that we need to have all the participants at one location for the initial live on-site part, what sometimes can be hard to arrange.

All custom-ordered instances also benefit from the possibility to tailor exercises and content. For example, some lectures can be extended, shortened or skipped. Exercises can be changed so that the examples are based on real workproducts from the company ordering the course. Additional consultancy hours can be agreed to further deepen the understanding and to be able to apply the know-how to a specific flavour of problems experienced by the company. Finally, we can combine courses to upskill programs, to fulfill final outcomes for a company, for example, to prepare a team for a new area, new standards or new project requirements on the horizon.

With respect to the balance between live sessions and the self-paced work in courses, we have two course sub-flavours:

• Synchronous, meaning that most of the lectures will have associated live sessions to work out exercises in groups, with expert assistance and discussions. This is the format we use in all our live online open courses, and also with most of the custom-ordered courses. This format is suitable for most participants, giving them opportunity and time to comprehend the field and get enough practice. Ratio between live, in-session practical coursework and self-paced parts is usually 1:1 (meaning, for a course of 30 hours of total required effort, 15 hours will happen as live sessions with the instructor, whereas other 15 hours will be you watching digest videos, finalizing exercises, working out projects, solving quizzes and preparing for the exam).
• Mentored asynchronous, meaning that the participants go through the lecture and work out exercises mostly unaided. Live sessions still happen, but they are less frequent and serve as checkpoints, to perform Q&A and provide direct mentorship. This model is more suitable for participants that are more committed and more experienced. It is also more suitable for smaller groups, and is more cost-effective then an equivalent synchronized course. Ratio between live, mentored sessions and self-paced parts is usually 1:3 (meaning, for a course of 30 hours of total required effort, 7-8 hours will happen as live sessions with the instructor, whereas other 22-23 hours will be self-paced). Depending on participants, the learning outcome can still be very good.

Do I really need to enroll? Can I just get access to the materials and go through course on my own?

NIT Academy courses are different than other online courses, since we do not issue course completion certificates if we cannot really attest the outcomes (comprehension) of the topics by our participants. Therefore we do not have formats in which you can just click-through and get the certification in the end.

However, we understand that there is value in being able to listen to our high-quality video lectures and get introduced to a topic, prior to enrollment or even if you do not wish to enroll. Therefore it is possible to purchase video-only versions for many of our courses (check them out here). For a nominal price you get a video library which you can watch at your own pace, anytime. However, we do not offer certification for individuals who watched the videos. We also do not offer exercise materials and other interactive materials otherwise available when enrolling. We do, however, give you exercise seeds and ideas so that you can work out a problem after a video lecture, if you are in the mood.

What is a company transformation offer? What is a continuous upskill offer?

NIT Academy excels in crafting offers targeting customer success. Our most complete offers are those where we aim to achieve knowledge and culture transformation of a team or a complete company. And the requirement to transform and adapt to the ever-changing conditions in tech markets is not rare. Many industries undergo digital transformation. What used to be a few simple PLCs or analogue control blocks is now complex set of controllers, software, algorithms and apps, accross industries: automotive (software-defined vehicles, autonomous driving), Industry 4.0 (smart factories, smart cities), Media Everywhere (smart TVs, secure media access from any endpoint), etc. Adopting the change to software-defined industries requires new know-how (programming, frameworks, tools), but also adherence to process frameworks, especially with respect to security and safety. This is where NIT Academy excels. We are among the first to offer a full-scale transformation program to safety-first and security-first development in the automotive industry.

For clients wanting to be confident that their workforce is always to stay at the know-how forefront, we design a continuous upskill program. Together with companies we define individual upskill trajectories for various predefined triggers (e.g. onboarding, preparing for new standards, etc). Then we allocate a custom calendar and custom management for the client, to make sure the upskill process is continuous. Companies give us feedback and we improve and tailor courses continuously based on customer requirements. We also craft custom courses for companies requiring the niche know-how related to their own products. In those cases we work closely with staff allocated by our clients, to include company-side teaching assistants alongside our expert teachers. We also craft train-the-trainer programs allowing the company to internalize sensitive trainings if this need arises.

Can you offer consultancy services?

NIT Academy offers consultancy hours which can be purchased in addition to any custom course, to deepen the instructor immersion and help the team master the craft more easily and more related to their everyday work problems.

NIT Institute also offers expert consultancy for mid-term and long-term time-and-material engagements, in several expert areas related to functional safety, security and process enablement in companies, primarily in the automotive industry. To see our most recent expert consultancy services, visit our consultancy page.

What is NIT Academy's connection to UCSD? What does that collaboration mean for students who enroll in your certificate programs?

NIT Institute partnered with UCSD (University of California San Diego) on the programs for Automotive Functional Safety. Joint NIT-UCSD initiative resulted in the creation of a state-of-the art certificate program, approved by the UCSD Advisory board and Senate. NIT Academy instructors are at the same time UCSD instructors, and all the programs within the certificate are fully aligned with UCSD quality policies. Currently there are 9 UCSD-approved courses.

Who are the instructors behind these courses?

Our instructors are one of NIT Academy's proudest assets, mostly being PhD level experts with years of combined academic and industry experience. We believe that people with such qualifications are hard to find nowadays and that we have the best of the best right here. Moreover, 5 of our instructors are UCSD approved, and we plan to keep that number rising.

What is the success rate of courses at NIT Academy?

The success rate is currently around 70%, which is relatively high considering our courses aren't the easiest out there. If you work hard and do what is required of you, the chances you fail are highly unlikely. Nevertheless, there are always a few people who stop somewhere along the way due to lack of time, and they are typically the ones who don't pass. Although we have a final exam for each course, it can be retaken twice or even thrice if you happen to fail the first time.

How can I get the transcript of records and the digital certificate for one of the NIT Academy courses I attended?

It is easy to get the full transcript of records for all the courses you attended, as well as permanent shareable links to digital NIT Academy certificates, in case you know and have access to the e-mail you used to enroll to a course. It can be done automatically here.

In case you cannot remember your e-mail or do not have acccess to it, please make an inquiry here, or write us an e-mail providing the identity proof and our course office will provide you the required information.

How can I access video lectures of a course I purchased or attended?

If you attended a course or purchased a video-only version through our website, you can access video lectures through your authorized account for one year after the first access. If you attended the live online or mentored asynchronous version of a course with the instructor, you can access video lectures among other course materials located on the NIT Academy Canvas platform, which can be accessed here. In case you purchased a video-only version, you can find the course links in your e-mail inbox history, or we can resend you the links here.