Partner Content: Meet the Huawei global partners - It's game on for Microtest to teach IT skills faster and better

clock • 3 min read

Why make learning a game? Shouldn't it be about hard graft and study? The answer is that games excite and engage people, challenge them, and encourage them to complete tasks. In a competitive, high-stakes world, that's the kind of voluntary participation and commitment that helps both teams and individuals progress.

Take healthcare. Drug discovery is a hugely important area, as the world knows only too well. A key element of this is being able to predict the structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence, so that medications can be designed to bind onto it and trigger or prevent actions.

It's not a game - except when it needs to be. In the US, the University of Seattle, Washington State, uses online game FoldIt to crowdsource research that helps scientists working in protein structure prediction.

The aim is to find out if humans' pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If true, they plan to teach the human strategies they uncover to computers, to automate and vastly speed up the process.

It's not the only example of gamification in research and learning environments. For example, language learning app Duolingo also uses game-like elements, such as a currency (lingots), leaderboards, experience points, and reward badges, to engage and encourage users to progress.

Gamification is no idle activity, and it's certainly not wasted energy. In the gaming world, we know that millions of people spend hours competing with each other, solving problems, overcoming challenges, and using their brains, eyes, and hands. They also make new contacts and acquire new skills.

Gamification simply aims to capture that spirit of competition, teamwork, reward, and human engagement, and turn it towards other productive uses - such as keeping a nation's IT and communications networks running.

 

Founded in 1996, award-winning Microtest was the first Huawei Authorized Learning Partner (HALP) in Russia. Its mission is to explore new methods to train users in new technologies and find innovative ways to engage students in learning. Gamification has proved to be a highly successful approach.

Launched in 2016, IT-Games PRO is a Microtest methodology that combines teamwork and competition with coaching, training, practice, and testing, all culminating in a certification exam. Its storytelling and troubleshooting features add entertainment and interest to the experience, transforming it into something engaging and active - quite different from traditional, passive models.

Building on the success of IT-Games Pro, Microtest and Huawei launched the Huawei Hunger Games 2018 two years later. The educational gaming championship involved some of the leading corporations in the country, including Russian Railways, Sberbank, and Yandex.

Twenty-six projects were entered in the Games and participants passed 100 Huawei exams, stimulating a new wave of interest in the company's IT certification programme: more than 400 certification exams were passed at Microtest Training Centres during the second half of 2018 alone.

Inspired by these success stories, Microtest and Huawei launched an even more ambitious gaming concept with some more of Russia's largest companies: the Huawei Certified Internetwork Expert (HCIE) Huawei Camp 2019. The goal was to boost IT specialists' knowledge, experience, and confidence - while pushing new teams of HCIE-trained experts out into the field.

It's an important undertaking for the nation: significant parts of the enterprise networks in Russia are constructed with Huawei equipment, so keeping them running securely and at their optimum capacity is essential for every organisation in the country, and in any nation that uses Huawei kit.

Moving forward with Huawei, and developing new initiatives and skill sets, Microtest is now planning new campaigns to promote the full suite of Huawei certifications - including Huawei Certified ICT Associate (HCIA), Huawei Certified ICT Professional (HCIP), and HCIE - while demonstrating that there is real demand for Huawei-certified experts on a global scale.

For example, their certified IT professionals could open doors to careers in developing markets, notably other BRICS nations, such as Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, and elsewhere across the African continent.

Find out more on the Huawei Talent Online.

You may also like
China declares lockdown in manufacturing tech hub Shenzhen

Vendor

Supply chain issues could worsen further amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

clock 14 March 2022 • 1 min read

Vendor

The analyst further predicts cloud infrastructure spending to total $74.6bn by the end of this year

clock 05 July 2021 • 1 min read

Vendor

Amazon retained the number one position in the IaaS market

clock 28 June 2021 • 2 min read

Sign up to our newsletter

The best news, stories, features and photos from the day in one perfectly formed email.

More on Partnership

Industry Voice: Accelerating sustainable outcomes for the UK's future with cloud and machine learning

Industry Voice: Accelerating sustainable outcomes for the UK's future with cloud and machine learning

By Jake Oster, Director of Energy & Environmental Policy at Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS
clock 09 November 2023 • 5 min read
SEP2 and Netpremacy link arms for Google Cloud security push

SEP2 and Netpremacy link arms for Google Cloud security push

“It’s very obvious that Google want to play in the security space – you don’t spend $4bn on an organisation if there’s not clear intent there," Sep2 CEO Paul Starr tells CRN

Doug Woodburn
clock 22 March 2023 • 1 min read
Sage forms new partnership to help SMBs with finances

Sage forms new partnership to help SMBs with finances

Sage claims the move means customers can do business and take payments anywhere

clock 14 September 2022 • 1 min read

Highlights

Staff & Salaries 2022

Staff & Salaries 2022

A snapshot of pay and headcount trends in the UK channel

Doug Woodburn
clock 09 March 2022 • 1 min read
Midwich CEO on Nimans acquisition, 2021 results and return to pre-pandemic levels

Midwich CEO on Nimans acquisition, 2021 results and return to pre-pandemic levels

Stephen Fenby talks to CRN after Midwich’s 2021 results in which profitability exceeded pre-pandemic levels

Josh Budd
clock 08 March 2022 • 3 min read
4 more vendors suspend sales in Russia following Ukraine invasion

4 more vendors suspend sales in Russia following Ukraine invasion

IBM and Microsoft are among a number of vendors which have also announced that they will halt sales in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

clock 08 March 2022 • 3 min read