Focusing on Application of Practical Knowledge
Since the beginning of the autumn semester last year, doctoral student Mārtiņš Janševskis has been working at Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences (ViA), thus contributing to the achievement of the goal of the project “Academic Staff and Human Resources Development at Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences” – to involve doctoral students in the academic work of the university and to promote the attraction of new academic staff in the long term.
Mārtiņš Janševskis has been connected with Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences since 2017, starting his activities as a research assistant, but later continuing as a guest lecturer. He got involved in the aforementioned project in 2019 following the suggestion of Director of the Knowledge and Technology Centre Kaspars Osis.
Mārtiņš Janševskis has been working in the information technology sector for more than ten years. “During this time, I have accumulated quite a lot of practical experience in the development and creation of various projects and products, also start-ups. When defining the benefit of the university in simple terms, I would like to mention precisely this practical experience, which I also try to introduce in the study courses. Currently I am in charge of four courses: Introduction to Mobile Technologies, Mobile Software Engineering 1, Mobile Software Engineering 2 and Engineering of Cyber Security Requirements,” commented Mārtiņš Janševskis.
He emphasized that during lectures he tried to focus on the application of practical knowledge, defining theoretical information as secondary. “In the courses related to software development, the students need to work in small groups and create a functional prototype of a mobile application according to their own defined requirements and free choice. Their success differs. For some groups of students such an approach yields results, but there are, of course, others who have problems working according to flexibly defined guidelines,” said Mārtiņš Janševskis.
He stated that one of the important criteria that he tried to develop in his students and that he had observed in young professionals entering the industry was the lack of practical skills and the challenges of operating in a rapidly changing environment. "And this is precisely the reason why I try to focus on flexibly defined requirements with the possibility to experiment within the given sphere," explained Mārtiņš Janševskis.
In his opinion, the process of higher education primarily provides new knowledge and contacts. But the obtained diploma confirms the individual's ability to concentrate at least to a certain extent for several years and the ability to develop a final work.
With regard to his personal achievements in science, Mārtiņš Janševskis highlighted the participation in the conference "5th International Conference on Big Data Analytics, Data Mining and Computational Intelligence", where he submitted the article "Knowledge discovery and framework for purchase behaviour analysis in mobile gaming applications".
"Also, together with the adviser of the dissertation, we are currently working on the publication "Framework and Knowledge Discovery in Learning Feedback Data Based Active Learning Ecosystem for Teaching Support",” commented the guest lecturer.