“Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one’s attention in the present moment without evaluation, a skill one develops through meditation or other training.”–Wikipedia.
Mindfulness differs from having your mind full of things; while the mind is used for problem-solving, it is often difficult to get the mind to focus on the present as it wanders away to dreamland, with various imaginations, fiction, and past events. Mindfulness requires conscious and intentional efforts to focus the mind. This practice is primarily accomplished through constant meditation and training, in which the mind is forced to think, analyze, and focus in order to find a solution.
Continuous meditation and patience are required to teach the mind to be still and focused.
Mindfulness in philosophy dates back 2,500 years to Buddhist psychology, where the word Sati is translated to mean mindfulness, which means awareness, attention, and remembrance in their understanding. This act is now practiced in other religions such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and others.
Kabat Zinn developed the mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MSBR) course at Massachusetts Medical School in 1990 with the goal of combating stress and pain in the participants. Kabat-techniques Zinn’s include breathing meditation, Yoga, and body scanning. Since then, these techniques have been used to treat conditions and addictions such as depression and drug abuse.
Some of the advantages of mindfulness practice are as follows:
–Increases kindness, compassion, and acceptance of oneself and others.
–Improves self-control.
–Reduces the impact of fatigue and tiredness.
–Improves relaxation and concentration.
–Enhances the ability to tolerate.
–Enhances the ability to remain calm and composed.
–Enhances concentration and clarity.
–Enhances emotional intelligence.
–Alleviates anxiety.
–It alleviates depression.
–Increases happiness.
–Strengthens the ability to tolerate.
–Improves sleep disorder symptoms.
–Aids in pain management.
–Enhances one’s quality of life.
–Improves one’s sense of well-being.
Mindfulness can be practiced in a variety of ways, including:
Meditation – This is the practice of concentrating one’s mind on a specific object, sound, concept, activity, or thought in order to achieve a clear mental state.
Maintaining a Gratitude Journal – This entails keeping a journal and writing down positive feelings and thoughts. This forces the mind to focus on the positives rather than the negatives, allowing you to be more mindful of the positives. Journals can be kept manually or digitally.
Conscious Breathing – “The way to release all the tension is with our mindful breath,” said renowned teacher Thick Nhat Hanh. As a result, we always begin with mindfulness. Conscious breathing exercise is one method of practicing mindfulness because it trains the mind to focus by allowing you to focus on your breathing.
Mindful Mantras – This is the use of affirmative and positive language, such as “I am unique” and “I am blessed.” The constant repetition of words like this assists the mind in focusing on the positives.
Exercising – While exercising, the mind is conditioned to focus on a target and is free of wandering thoughts; this is both mental and physical training.
As important and intriguing as mindfulness may sound, it is not suitable for everyone. For example, someone who has experienced trauma may find that practicing mindfulness brings back unpleasant memories and distress. If mindfulness is to be practiced on such a person, it will necessitate the involvement of a professional who can help combine mindfulness and treatment while taking into account the type of trauma such a person has experienced.
“Psychoeducation is an evidence-based therapeutic intervention for patients and their loved ones that provide information and support to better understand and cope with illness.” – Wikipedia
This procedure is primarily used for patients with serious mental illnesses, but it has since been extended to other types of illnesses, such as when the patient is a child or when some of the medication must be taken at home. Knowledge of the ailment, administration of the prescribed drugs, drug interactions, and so on, enables the family to better manage the patient’s condition and cope with any situation that may arise.
C.M Anderson, a researcher, developed psychoeducation in 1980 as a way to combat the rate of relapse in patients with mental health issues. He believes that if both the patient’s family and the patient are aware of the symptoms and treatments for the disease, the rate of relapse will be reduced.
Psychoeducation has gradually become a part of patient treatment procedures, owing to the fact that it aids symptom improvement and helps patients accurately adhere to medication recommendations. When prospects understand what they are dealing with and what to expect, they are better able to follow their doctor’s orders.
Patients are motivated by psychoeducation because they are empowered with information about their condition, making them a key player in their healing process. On most occasions, patients and families are not simply told what to do; rather, they are given both the diagnosis and treatment options from which to choose, allowing them to make their own decision on how to handle the situation.
Because psychoeducation is primarily concerned with knowledge transfer, there is no set standard for how the sessions should be conducted. The duration of the various sessions varies depending on the severity of the ailment and the length of treatment.
Some of the goals of psychoeducation are as follows:
-To dispel any misconceptions that may arise as a result of the disease’s symptoms
-Informing patients and families about the disease’s signs and symptoms, as well as the outcome, side effects of the medication, and how to deal with them.
-Informing the family and the patient about what to avoid during treatment and medication.
-Informing those concerned about various medication options so that they can make an informed decision.
-Informing those concerned about signs of relapse, when to administer first aid, and what types of first aid to use prior to consultation.
Whatever psychoeducational model is used for which patient and family, individual patient characteristics and unique family dynamics must be considered if the goal is to be met.
More needs to be done to increase the relevance of psychoeducation in the medical field.
By Betty Vandenbosch, Chief Content Officer, Coursera
Today, as part of Coursera’s ongoing commitment to learners in India, I’m pleased to announce the first entry-level certificates and Specializations from leading Indian industry partners. Experts at PwC India, Tally Education, and Hero Mindmine will equip learners with job-relevant skills in taxation, accounting, insurance, and power systems.
These programs will serve the 16 million people in India on Coursera eager to learn from industry experts. Learners in India have enrolled in twice as many courses from industry partners in Q1 2022 as the same period the year prior. Demand is increasingly driven by students and employees who gain access to Coursera through their university or workplace, accounting for 32% of these enrollments.
First entry-level certificates from Indian industry partners, PwC India and Tally Education
These new entry-level certificates require no prerequisites, college degree, or prior work experience and prepare learners for high-demand finance roles.
GST Tax Executive and Direct Tax Executive Professional Certificates from PwC India – These entry-level, 6-course certificates will take roughly 24 weeks to complete. Through hands-on projects and expert-led instruction, they provide learners with a foundational understanding of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Direct Tax practices, equipping them with the knowledge required for a beginner role in the field. Expected to launch in September 2022 and early 2023.
“Following the government’s introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) a few years ago, demand for finance professionals with GST-specific knowledge has grown. Through digitally enabled content, we’re eager to help prepare learners of all backgrounds to step into one of the thousands of tax-related roles in India and, in turn, enable organizations to operate more smoothly and compliantly,” said Manpreet Singh Ahuja, Chief Digital Officer, PwC in India.
Tally Business Accounting Professional Certificate from Tally Education – In about 120 hours, this certificate helps learners prepare for a business accounting role, a field in considerable need of skilled talent. It will help learners understand and apply concepts of bookkeeping, accounting, inventory management, tax, and more. According to Gartner, there were approximately 30,000 accounting job postings in India over the last year. Expected to launch in September 2022.
“Tally Education’s motto is “To positively impact the lives of ‘Learners’ by increasing employability, accelerating professional careers, and adding value to the businesses they operate.” Organizations of all sizes and sectors need skilled business accounting professionals. In collaboration with Coursera, Tally is excited to offer both the learning content and hiring pathways to help learners globally in advancing their career in the domain of accounting, finance, and administration,” said Bhuwaneshwari B, CEO of Tally Education.
First Specialization from Indian industry partner – Hero Mindmine
Through a series of rigorous courses, Specializations help learners master a specific skill within three to six months.
Insurance Selling Specialization from Hero Mindmine – This four-course Specialization will cover the foundations of the insurance industry, different types of insurance, and key tenets to being a successful insurance salesperson. Taught by industry experts and taking roughly 16 weeks to complete, it’s designed for aspiring and early-career insurance professionals. Launching later this year.
“We’re excited to collaborate with Coursera to teach learners, especially those early in their careers or new to the industry, the core competencies of insurance and selling insurance. Our subject matter experts will break down the essential aspects of the too-often overly-complex domain of insurance in a way that is accessible for learners of varied backgrounds and aptitudes,” said Vivek Sharma, AVP & Head- Enterprise Business at Hero Mindmine.
We are honored to partner with leading companies in India to share their expertise with the world and help learners break into high-demand digital roles — regardless of their background. Programs like these help increase access and can lead to a diversification of the talent pipeline. I’m eager to see these new programs educate learners in India and beyond.
You’ve probably already marveled at the groundbreaking and truly mind-blowing images of space that were captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and released this week. If you haven’t seen them yet, feast your eyes on these photos and prepare to feel very small.
While it’s practically impossible to wrap your head around the vastness of the universe, the technology that JWST uses to take these incredible images is more down-to-earth than you might think. In fact, the general-purpose programming language Python played a big role in JWST’s ability to capture and catalog these images.
Curious how programming skills can impact space exploration? Read on to learn about the connection between astronomy and data science, and the programming languages to learn if you want to get into the field.
Why astronomy is a lot like data science
“Astronomy has always been about data collection,” says Nitya Mandyam, Senior Curriculum Developer at Codecademy who has a PhD in astrophysics. Since ancient times, astronomers — the ground-based researchers who study stars, planets, and other celestial bodies — have been mapping the position of the moon and creating star catalogs for practical purposes, like tracking the seasons or planning crops.
Thanks to high-tech telescopes like JWST, astronomers today have way more data to work with, so they use code to manage it. “We spend our time at a computer writing and running code to analyze the images and data collected from telescopes and other instruments,” Erik Tollerud, Assistant Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, told GitHub’s The ReadME Project.
Python is the most common programming language that folks in the astronomy field utilize, because it’s “the language of data analysis, data manipulation, and data inference,” Nitya says.
Other programming tools that are common in astronomy include NumPy, the Python module for performing numerical operations on large quantities of data, and MatPlotLib, which is a library for creating visuals in Python.
“So much of astronomy is basically taking data, putting it on a plot, and then drawing conclusions,” Nitya explains. “There’s so much data that the visual trends that we can see make all the difference.”
Using Python for the largest space telescope in history
The spectacular photos that JWST took of glimmering nebulas and “cosmic cliffs” also contain valuable data that scientists rely on to research the galaxies. As JWST orbits 1 million miles away, software engineers back on earth use Python to receive, organize, and file all the data that comes from the telescope.
Here’s how it works: Data from NASA’s Deep Space Network feeds down into the Space Telescope Science Institute’s processing systems using Python. “And that’s where my code comes in,” Mike Swam, the data processing team lead who worked on JWST, said on an episode of the podcast Talk Python to Me in March 2022.
The JWST is designed with a 18-piece mirror that enables it to pick up far infrared light from distant galaxies. (Image credit: NASA/Desiree Stover)
The stakes are high for software engineers to make sure the data is complete, check it for errors, and shepherd all of the pieces along the processing systems pipeline so the files can be archived properly. “We have a lot of data completion checking that we do in Python,” Mike said on the podcast.
The type of data that these programmers interact with is everything from binary data that comes from flight data recorders to engineering and “ephemeris data,” which tell you exactly where the telescope has been positioned and what it’s been doing. All of this supplemental data gets stored in the files so that scientists can access it and conduct research.
Without the data, JWST’s photos might as well be pretty screensavers: “They’re beautiful and they’re almost useless for science without the metadata,” Mike said.
How to start exploring data that came from space
If you want to be a “citizen scientist” and analyze JWST’s data on your own, they have a whole Github repo available where you can access pretty much their entire pipeline. The Space Telescope Science Institute also has guides to its documentation and instructions on how to access it here.
“Obviously, you may not know what to do with it — but even as a starting point, having all of this information there is super useful,” Nitya says.
There are also some fun astronomy-specific tools and applications that you might want to check out: Galaxy Zoo is a crowd-sourced application that allows volunteers to classify galaxies based on their shapes; and Astropy is a Python package specifically designed for astronomy.
It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with Jupyter Notebooks, the tool that enables you to write and iterate on your Python code for data analysis. Nitya calls Jupyter Notebooks “the bread and butter of data science.”
Whether you’re inspired to pick up Python or you want to dig in analyzing JWST’s data and open-source software right away, here are the courses to check out:
Learn Python 3: Python tends to be a good language for beginners because it’s easy to read and concise. In this course, you’ll master the fundamentals of programming in Python and complete a few projects.
Learn SQL: Basic SQL querying is super useful in astronomy, Nitya says. This course walks you through how to use SQL to access, create, query, and manipulate data.
Visualize data with Python: This skill path will walk you through some of the go-to Python libraries that astronomers use, like MatPlotLib and Pandas. You’ll also learn how to create charts and graphs to tell a story with data.
Build Deep Learning Models with TensorFlow: If you know some Python, NumPy, and machine learning already, you’ll be well-suited for this skill path. There’s even a project that will have you classifying galaxies.
When you’re looking for a job in Information Technology — a.k.a. “IT” — there are plenty of factors to think about, like the company culture, remote work flexibility, benefits, and salary.
While salary isn’t everything, it likely is a key consideration as you examine which career path is best for you. And even though certain jobs have standard salary ranges, your individual pay will depend on many things, like your experience level, location, and the company itself.
So what do IT jobs actually pay? Ahead, we’ll take a look at some of the higher paying jobs in the industry to give you a rough idea of the field as you work out which job is right for you.
1. Cybersecurity Engineer
The constant increase in cybercriminals targeting businesses means that a Cybersecurity Engineer is a must-have for any organization hoping to protect their consumer data and keep their employees secure and productive. These engineers design, develop, and implement network security measures and work to prevent hacking attempts and other threats to network security. The average Cybersecurity Specialist in the U.S. earns $93,000, according to Glassdoor.
Earning just about $90,000 a year on average according to Indeed, an IT Manager plays an important leadership role. The IT Manager often communicates with the leadership team and coordinates the efforts of the developers, engineers, and cybersecurity experts to ensure that IT is working to meet the organization’s ultimate goals. This role combines management skills with an understanding of how everything technical is working and where improvements may need to be made. As Deanna Christy, an IT manager at Urban Outfitters and Free People put it, “What I really like is you can be involved in IT without actually coding. You have to understand what each team can do to get your project out the door and how to test it for them.”
An Enterprise Architect is charged with a large portion of setting up and creating a network, including deciding how and when to allocate and deploy resources. With the overall IT strategy decided, the work of setting up and deploying these resources can be delegated to other team members. The enterprise architect makes important high-level strategic decisions and communicates with leadership. The average pay for this position is just about $130,000 annually, according to Glassdoor.
Want to get started on this path? Our IT courses can give you a jumpstart on the Information Technology networks and services you’ll need to know in order to be an Enterprise Architect.
4. Information Security Engineer
The Information Security Engineer’s job is to secure company data against hackers and cybercriminals. With threats increasing and data breaches becoming more common, a robust security program is a high priority for all organizations that handle sensitive customer information. This is typically done by combining protective measures like firewalls and anti-virus programs with monitoring the network’s traffic to help detect any threats or unusual activity early on. On average, information security engineers in the United States make an annual salary of around $96,000, per Glassdoor.
The job of a Full-Stack Developer is to balance everything that makes up the everyday use of a computer or mobile device, including apps, servers, and databases. Full-Stack Developers develop software for web and mobile apps, and have knowledge of front-end and back-end development to help assess a network’s resources and keep each app running smoothly. According to Indeed, a Full-Stack Developer in the United States makes an average of about $100,000 annually.
Our Full-Stack Software Engineer career path courses can show you the ins and outs of front-end and back-end development, as well as building and styling interactive sites.
6. Computer Software Engineer
Earning just over $92,000 annually, per Glassdoor, a Computer Software Engineer does more than just code and build applications. These engineersalsowork with both the management and executive team of an organization, as well as their team of IT professionals, to ensure the right apps and websites are built. Combining interpersonal skills with knowledge of multiple coding languages, the Computer Software Engineer deals with both people and machines, keeping the job varied and interesting.
As a DevOps Engineer, you’ll be charged with creating code for development and operations, which might include front- and back-end programming. While Software Engineers build digital products and computer systems, DevOps Engineers make sure applications are developed efficiently. Since they work to maintain software, DevOps Engineers have to be ready to develop code in the relevant languages quickly to solve issues and get the operations back on track. According to Glassdoor, the average American DevOps Engineer earns $119,000 each year.
To get started in this career path, take a look at our Intro to DevOps course.
8. Data Engineer
Data Engineers are tasked with analyzing the large volume of data that businesses have coming in constantly. They’re also responsible for developing and maintaining the infrastructure that collects and processes this data. With website analytics, e-commerce figures, and consumer data in play, it can be difficult and time-consuming for the executive team to look at the raw numbers. Analysis of this information helps direct everything from marketing strategy to website development. The business can also use this data to make informed decisions on the best way to move forward. On average, Data Engineers earn over $125,000 annually in the U.S.
Our Data Science courses can help you build out the skills you need, including programming languages like Python 3 and SQL.
9. Computer Programmer
With the increasing need for skilled people who can code new websites, games, and apps, Computer Programmers are in high demand. Computer Programmers specialize in distinct areas, and may work on an operating system’s performance, website development, or app and game creation. They write and test code, and fix software bugs as well as plan development projects. While the average Computer Programmer makes $86,500 each year, the top programmers in the field can make over $100,000 by choosing one of these specialties and gaining experience and certifications.
If you’re interested in computer programming, our course catalog can help you get started in learning the skills you need for the job.
10. Enterprise Architect
An Enterprise Architect is charged with determining which existing apps the business should use to solve issues and which are better handled by creating a new app. By balancing these apps so that they work efficiently without taking up too much space, the Application Architect keeps the pace of business moving. The average Enterprise Architect working in the United States is paid $150,000 each year, according to Glassdoor.
Our courses on computer science can help you build your foundation to become an Application Architect.
Choosing from the available jobs in IT
If you aren’t sure which of these career paths is the right one for you, take our sorting quiz to help figure out which languages and technical courses you’re likely to enjoy based on your skills and interests. Once you’ve identified your programming personality, you can start there and always shift gears if you find another language or IT job you’re more interested in.
This contest is open to students 11-19 from anywhere in the world. To participate, submit a response by 9 a.m. Eastern on July 15 that answers the questions “What got your attention in The New York Times this week? Why?”
If you are 13 or older and live in the United States, or 16 or older from anywhere else in the world, post your response in the comment section. If you are a teacher, parent or guardian and your kids or students are 11-12 years old and live in the United States, or 11-15 and live in another country, see the bottom of this post for details on how to submit.
Responses must be 1,500 characters — about 250 words — or fewer.
We hope you’ll click around nytimes.com and find your own great articles, features and multimedia. But we also know that not everyone who participates has a Times subscription. Because all links to Times content from the student features on our site are free, every week we’ll try to help by posting interesting pieces from a variety of sections.
For example, this week you may have read front-page news articles like …
Need more details? The contest rules are all here, and you can read the work of last year’s winners here. A quick overview, though:
You can choose from anything published in the print paper or on nytimes.com in 2022, including videos, podcasts, graphics and photographs. (In your response, please include the URL or headline of the piece you pick.)
We’ll post this question each Friday from today through Aug. 12, and you’ll have until the next Friday morning to respond with your picks. Then we’ll close that post and open a new one with the same question.
We’ll choose at least one favorite answer to feature on our site each week. Winners from this week will be announced on Tuesday, July 26.
Feel free to participate each week, but we allow only one submission per person per week.
The contest is open to students ages 11 to 19 from anywhere in the world. If you are 13 or older and live in the United States, or 16 or older from anywhere else in the world, post your response in the comments section. If you are a teacher, parent or guardian of a student or child who is between the ages of 11 and 12 and live in the United States, or 11 and 15 and live in another country, then you must submit an entry on the student’s behalf using the form below. All entries from the comments section and the form below will be judged together.
This week we have had unprecedented news: On a historic day, NASA has allowed us to see the first color image of the new space telescope, the James Webb, Hubble’s successor, which has given us a first look at the origin of the universe.
Knowing more about the James Webb Telescope
According to the NASA site, the James Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever created. Its mission was launched on December 25, 2021, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana.
Their job is to observe a never-before-seen part of space and time, providing a host of amazing views of an era when the first stars and galaxies formed, more than 13.5 billion years ago. “It can explore the residents of our own solar system in new and exquisite detail and study the atmospheres of distant worlds. From new stars forming to devouring black holes, Webb will reveal all this and more!” NASA explains on its website.
The construction of Webb was an international collaboration between NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). Thousands of engineers and hundreds of scientists worked to make Webb a reality, along with more than 300 universities, organizations, and companies from 29 US states and 14 countries!
What did Webb reveal in his recent images?
The ‘James Webb’ telescope revealed thousands of galaxies in the deep universe, in the first full-color image of it. It was the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who was in charge of making public the first snapshot taken by the largest astronomical observatory ever launched into space.
The image published on February 11, 20022, is the most distant and precise that has been obtained of the deep universe in the infrared spectrum, according to NASA. It shows SMACS 0723, a region of the sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere where a large cluster of galaxies stands out 4.6 billion light-years from Earth. The gravitational pull of this cluster warps space and time and works like a lens that magnifies the light from much more distant and dim galaxies behind it. The Webb image shows that the instrument can capture this phenomenon and pursue one of its main goals: to see further into the universe than any other telescope, to capture the light of the first stars born after the Big Bang, the explosion with which The universe was born 13.7 billion years ago.
The Webb is one of the largest scientific projects in history, both for its size and its cost. The $10 billion observatory is an instrument so powerful it can go back to the origins of the universe. Its design, construction, and launch took 3 decades, with the space agencies of the US, Europe, and Canada being part of its development.
Doodle in honor of the deepest photo in the universe
Where is the telescope located?
The observatory is located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, in a region of space known as the second Lagrange point, so in the event of a technical problem, it would not have been possible to send astronauts to repair it, as was done with the Hubble Space Telescope, which is still operational after 32 years in orbit and which on March 30 showed an image of Eärendel, the farthest star observed.
However, between May 23 and 25, the James Webb suffered a micrometeorite impact on one of its primary mirror segments. A shock that, according to NASA, was left in a scare because after the checks, the team that operates it assured that it works at a level that exceeds all the requirements of the mission despite the fact that it detected a marginal effect on the data.
Stars and distant galaxies from the James Webb Telescope published by NASA.AFP
These are the other four objects that the Webb will display:
The Carina Nebula. Located 7,600 light-years from Earth, it is the brightest known nebula and stars are being born and dying inside it.
WASP-96b. A giant planet somewhat larger than Jupiter that is 1,150 light years away. If on Earth a year lasts 365 days, the time it takes for our planet to complete an orbit around the Sun, this world is so close to its star that each year lasts just three and a half days. The main characteristic of this huge gaseous world is that, unlike Jupiter or Saturn, it does not appear to have clouds. Spectroscopy data from Webb are expected to indicate what elements are in its atmosphere to confirm previous observations made with other telescopes.
NGC 3132. This huge, expanding cloud of gas surrounds a dying star 2,000 light-years from Earth. It is also known as the Southern Ring Nebula, and is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
Stephan’s Quintet. The first compact group of galaxies, was discovered in 1877 by the French astronomer Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan. It is about 300 million light-years away. Four of its galaxies are linked by their forces of gravity in a violent choreography that sometimes makes them collide, which revives the birth of new stars.
Humanity, with the development of science and technology, is increasingly able to understand its history and environment, thanks to men and women who have not stopped until they have conquered hitherto unknown terrain and who are changing the course of history. Are you one of them? Dare to conquer your dreams!
If you want to learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope, the following information is not to be missed:
By Raghav Gupta, Managing Director, India and APAC, Coursera
India will add a whopping 101 million working age people to its workforce by 2030. Ensuring students get a relevant education and develop skills that prepare them for future jobs will be “the biggest enabler” to sustain economic growth and realize the country’s demographic dividend. There’s a massive opportunity ahead, and Indian universities are responding with agility to prepare their students for emerging, high-demand jobs in Digital India.
Higher education institutions are leveraging Coursera for Campus (C4C) to identify new pathways into well-paying digital jobs, improve graduate employability and empower faculty to upgrade their skills. A significant 40% of all campus learners on Coursera come from India. The momentum is spreading to India’s non-metro cities, where institutions across the country are using online learning to remove barriers to access and opportunity for India’s youth at scale, demonstrating the potential to level the playing field for students. Many of the changes on the ground reflect India’s evolving priorities for higher education, and are in-line with the National Education Policy’s focus on ‘equitable and inclusive learning’ and greater access to high-quality education.
Indian universities & colleges are looking at new approaches to give their students an edge in the job market. Here are four ways we are seeing colleges in India leverage C4C to increase student enrollments, better align with industry, and deliver stronger outcomes:
1) SkillSets and Professional Certificates are making students job-ready
Skills are changing rapidly in India’s fast-growing digital economy. SkillSets on Coursera are enabling institutions to keep pace with this change by linking academic curricula to the current needs of employers. Colleges are also turning students job-ready faster by offering industry-recognized Professional Certificates, from C4C’s Career Academy. Such ‘role-specific’ training from industry leaders like Google, IBM and Meta is equipping students for entry-level digital skills employers are looking for.
KGiSL Educational Institutions in Tamil Nadu has strategically adopted SkillSets for their Engineering and Science students, enhancing employability outcomes by giving them an edge in sought-after areas like Mobile App Development, Web Development, Python, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Networking, Cybersecurity, and Cloud Computing.
Lakshmi Narain College of Technology, in Madhya Pradesh, is helping students become industry-ready as soon as they graduate. With strong adoption of Professional Certifications and Specializations in the domains of computer programming, web development and data management, students at this technical institute have completed 200+ certifications in four months alone.
Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology (Deemed University) in Patiala, Punjab, is leveraging SkillSets to prepare students for high-demand Data Science careers, giving them access to relevant data science Specializations, Professional Certifications and Guided Projects on Coursera.
International Management Institute in New Delhi aims to leverage SkillSets to hit multiple goals, including integrating technical learning in MBA for the institute’s management education, and boosting foundational skills to support internships and placements.
2) Empowering students with multi-disciplinary skills to open multiple career path
Many C4C partners are now encouraging and incorporating multi-disciplinary skill development that can equip students to go down multiple career paths once they enter the workforce.
Chandigarh University is helping Engineering students hone a variety of skills, including human skills, to supplement their technical knowledge. For electives in the first year, students have a choice of general proficiency courses ranging from ‘Virtual Reality,’ to ‘Teamwork’ and Guided Projects on Coursera. Students are clearly embracing this opportunity, with the university closing 17,000+ certifications within five months of the program launching.
SGT University, in Haryana, is leveraging C4C to reward and encourage meritorious students to build multidisciplinary and transferable future skills
Shillong’s Martin Luther Christian University (MLCU) is boosting its portfolio of programs for the sustainable development of Northeast India through C4C. MLCU, as the pioneers in the field of social work and counseling psychology in NE India, is leveraging the breadth of world-class learning choices on Coursera for its diverse study areas like gender, theology, commerce, management, sustainability and allied sciences.
3) Curriculum integration: Learning from the best in the world We are seeing growing use cases for how Indian institutions are closing gaps in their curriculum quickly and at an unprecedented scale, through curriculum integration.
Marwadi University in Rajkot, Gujarat, is integrating hybrid learning to elevate curricula and its instructional delivery. The integration with C4C content is delivering strong results. Students have clocked more than 22,500 hours of learning in the past 9 months and completed over 5,300 certificates in fields like Management, Engineering, Computer Applications, and Pharmacy. The university is also enabling students to gain hands-on learning experience and boost applied skills through Guided Projects on Coursera.
C4C is paving the way at RV Institute of Management (an autonomous Institution of Excellence), in Bangalore, to provide “unlimited open learning” opportunities as the institutes align their focus to India’s National Education Policy.
CVM University, in Vallabh Vidyanagar, Gujarat, has opened up campus-wide access to Coursera content across various disciplines, with focus on emerging tech.
Karnavati University, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, known for its Design and Law offerings, has curated learning choices for students from Coursera’s comprehensive, unparalleled catalog of global, high-quality content.
PSGR Krishnammal College for Women in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu is an NIRF-ranked All-Women’s Institute committed to empowering young women to become successful in their careers. The institution is integrating industry-aligned Coursera content into their curriculum for programs across Management, Arts and Sciences.
4) Enabling faculty upskilling
Empowering teachers to teach the next generation of Indian students is a cornerstone of India’s higher education reforms. Through C4C, colleges are meeting the diverse learning needs of faculty members across disciplines, with the required depth and breadth of learning.
As part of its partnership with C4C, Nitte (Deemed to be University), in Mangalore, Karnataka, is enabling 250+ faculty members across schools to upskill, from Medical and Dental to Science, Physiotherapy, Pharmacy and Engineering. Learning is organized according to four faculty development themes: Technology for Education, Research and Scholarship, Civic Responsibilities and Personal Development. Upskilling on Coursera has been integrated into the faculty appraisal system at Nitte.
SGT University has strengthened its focus on upskilling faculty members in emerging skills like digital teaching and creating MOOCs, which is enabling them to create their own digital content.
As they make a world-class education accessible, universities & colleges in India are simultaneously narrowing skill gaps and enhancing student employability through Coursera for Campus. We are honoured to support our Campus partners for the next phase of growth, to deliver job-relevant learning to millions of students, positioning them for success in India’s young and competitive workforce.
Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders. The youth make up a significant percentage of the world’s population. This stark reality emphasises how important it is to shape, equip, and embrace their place in society knowing that it is them that will carry the successes and failures we create today. In the not-too-distant future, the older generation will be passing on the baton to young people to carry. What we’re all coming to realise is that the youth have to constantly adapt to the fast-changing world. They need to adopt necessary skills that will make the world liveable not just for them but future generations. World Youth Skills Day 2022 is a day that aims to embody this truth and rallies everyone globally to give them what they need to keep the fire burning.
What Is World Youth Skills Day?
Eight years ago in 2014, the United Nations (UN) made an announcement that every year on 15th July, the world would celebrate World Youth Skills Day. The goal of this day is to highlight the importance of the essential skills that are needed for the youth as they enter employment and pursue entrepreneurship. The day further provides its stakeholders, partners, businesses, development organisations, employers, and many others, to come together to raise awareness, open dialogue. This day creates an environment where the youth can acquire skills that will make them employable and employers. Furthermore, it serves to develop partnerships and strengthen sustainable development goals. This year’s theme is “Transforming youth skills for the future”.
The Significance of World Youth Skills Day
World Youth Skills Day, like many other days marked around the globe, is set to remind us of its value.
This day highlights the ever-increasing need to pour into and equip young people with essential skills that will shape the future.
It further provides opportunities for individuals, communities, and organisations to offer support to the young people around them. This can be achieved by creating training sessions, job fairs, mentorships, and work where they can develop and enhance their skills.
It also serves as a reminder that children and young people need access to learning valuable skills is their right. And we should all endeavour to provide platforms where this learning can take place.
What Crucial Skills Are Needed By The Youth?
The world is changing. There is a large skills gap that is causing many youths to fall through the cracks and get left behind with the changing world. However, young people are and are built with the ability to question, assess, evaluate, and discover not just the issues, but the solutions to resolve many of the issues facing the world. To do this optimally and effectively, they require a wider arc of skills to succeed.
This list is by no means exhaustive. Instead, it indicates the most cited and required skills for youth entering any industry or for success as an entrepreneur.
How Alison Is Supporting World Youth Skills Day
The UN and its supporting bodies recognise the numerous challenges facing the youth. Their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the UN in 2015, were a call to action to the world to work together to end poverty, protect the world and help make peace and prosperity a reality for all by 2020. Education is one route that can propel this change.
Alison is dedicated to empowering individuals of every age and background. We believe that by offering access to free courses around a range of subjects, we can reduce the burden of poverty, offer to personal, economic and career growth, and highlight amongst others. We are committed to helping achieve these goals withfocused alignment in the below areas:
No poverty
Quality education
Gender equality
Decent work and economic growth
Industry, innovation, and infrastructure
Reduced inequalities
Sustainable cities and communities
The youth, as key drivers and future leaders, play a pivotal role in remaining informed, engaged, and skilled to meet the 2030 goals.
Transitioning from school to the workplace is not always smooth. You’re discovering who you are, ways of working, how you work, your strengths, weaknesses, abilities and learning what else you need to improve in business and personal settings. We have a that can help you discover all of these and recommendations of courses we have to get you there. Because YOUth matters.
Any time you’ve refreshed your browser and gotten through the dreaded 404 error page, you can probably thank a Site Reliability Engineer for fixing the problem.
Site Reliability Engineers are responsible for working to keep websites functioning properly, ensuring that users can access a site and that they have a good experience using it. As you can imagine, plenty of websites need site reliability engineering, making it a flexible career path that can take you to most any industry you’re interested in.
Read on to learn what site reliability engineering is, what skills you need for the job, and how you can get your career path started.
What is site reliability engineering?
The Site Reliability Engineer’s role was first defined by Google and is closely related to a DevOps Engineer role. Google assigned a group of engineers the responsibility of keeping their site efficient, scalable, and reliable. Soon, other larger tech companies adopted these practices; and eventually, it became a standard technical role industry-wide.
A big part of the role is auditing the current systems of an enterprise, finding the simple, mundane tasks, and automating them to reduce errors in manual processes. This also frees up their time so they can focus on improving the system for the better.
A Site Reliability Engineer is usually the first person to take a close look at any errors or outages that happen in a system and figure out the quickest and most appropriate way to fix the immediate problem. Afterward, they evaluate, plan, and do the work to prevent the issue from happening again.
It is also part of the job to set up logging, monitoring, and analytics to detect problems with a system before they affect the users of a website or system. Along with these preventative tasks, they will use chaos engineering and run load tests on a system to find the weak spots it might have before live traffic exposes them.
Building your skills for Site Reliability Engineer jobs
A Site Reliability Engineer is usually a technology generalist who knows how to write software and manage IT infrastructure and networking. They also tend to have personality traits like:
Impatientwith mundane, repeatable tasks, which gives them the motivation to automate them
Detail–oriented, which allows them to find problems with a system
Systems thinkers who can see the big picture and how each part of a system contributes to the whole
Interested in learning new things because technology is constantly changing, and there are always new problems to tackle
Okay with working behind the scenes, writing code no users will see or even know exists to keep a system reliable
Site Reliability Engineers also need a lot of training since they touch almost every part of a system. Here are some skills you will need as a Site Reliability Engineer:
Coding: You will definitely need to know shell scripting. Along with that, it helps to know other back-end programming languages like Python, Java, C, or Go.
Writing: You will have to document the work you do, so it helps to know how to clearly describe the systems you’ve created.
Version control: To track your code, you need to know a version control system like Git.
Automation: Knowing how to automate testing and software builds with tools like Jenkins or Travis CI is a bonus.
Container systems: Many modern software systems are deployed with container systems like Docker, so knowing the basics is necessary.
Database systems: Site Reliability Engineers deal with the whole system, including databases like PostgreSQL.
Monitoring tools: You should know how to set up logs, monitoring tools, and analytics to determine when a system is in trouble.
Of course, you don’t need to know all of these things to become a Site Reliability Engineer, but you should masterat least a few. By looking at job listings, you can compare what you know to what a specific employer has requested to determine the gaps in your skillset and the training you need.
Getting through the hiring process
Once you have the skills you need to be a Site Reliability Engineer, it’s time to look for a job. The first steps are to create a resume and a portfolio to show your coding skills. If you don’t already have one, you should also create a LinkedIn profile, because it is one of the top tools used by recruiters. Once you have applied for a job or have been contacted by a recruiter, you will usually have to go through the following hiring process steps to get the job.
Phone screening
Phone screens are an initial step in determining if a candidate has the necessary skills and experience for a given role. If a recruiter contacts you, there may be two phone screens. If you’ve applied directly, there will likely only be one. A recruiter will give you a short screening call to determine that you have the skills needed for the job. Recruiters are usually not technically inclined, their goal is simply to confirm your information before they send you to the hiring manager. The hiring manager will then call you to ask you about your skills and determine if you will be a good fit with the team.
In-person or remote interview
Upon passing the phone screen(s), you will move on to one or more interviews that may last several hours each, over a period of days or weeks. It all depends on the job level you are applying for, the size of the company, and their specific hiring process.
In this interview or set of interviews, you will be asked to talk about your work history and the past projects and technologies you worked with previously. You will also be asked some behavioral questions to determine if you are a good fit for the company’s culture. For more information on what to expect in this step, check out our technical and behavioral interview tips.
Technical interview
Once you get through that interview and the company and you have determined the job is a good fit, next comes the interview that will put your skills to the test. In this interview, you will be asked technical questions about the specific technologies you will work with on the job.
Your interviewer will most likely give you one or more code challenges you will either solve in front of them or on an online testing platform on your own time. Some challenges will provide you with an interactive coding environment where you will execute and see the results of your code. Others will be whiteboard challenges where you write code without executing it. It’s important to talk through your solution as you work on it if the interviewer is present, because it’s often more important to them to see how you solve a problem than the factthat you can solve it. Check out our complete guide on acing the technical interview for more tips.
Get started on your career path
Now that you have a sense of what it takes to become a Site Reliability Engineer and how the hiring process generally works, you can start building the technical skills you need. Check out our course catalog to find the training to fill in any gaps in your skills. Some great courses to start with are:
