Author: ReBecca Compton

Think of the expanding number of CODE’s graduates like a dam breaking. First we had 2, then only a few weeks later 5, suddenly 9, with handfuls and handfuls more turning in their Capstone Projects (final projects) every month. CODE alumni leave these hallowed, tech-y halls with trajectories so incredibly different that it’s impossible not to find someone who’s doing something that you (yes, you) are interested in.

But since we can’t talk to everyone in a short article, we sat down (with distance ?) with three of these alumni. They’re a mix of alumni and students who aren’t technically finished, but come on, they’re one CODE-issued document away from having graduated. 

Who are they? Glad you asked. We have:

Jean Hernández Meze (Piero), who is a Software Development Engineer for Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“AWS CloudWatch has the biggest time stream database on the planet right now.”

Darleen Zumbruch, who designs for two companies: Ergosign and the non-profit organization Between the Lines. 

“We worked on the project with 5 CODE students, and now we’re an organization with 16 team members and more than 60 supporters. I’m very proud to be here.”

Constantin Schreiber, who co-founded Blair and takes care of the product and tech side of the company.

“Keep the spirit and pay it forward, whatever that means for you.”

The community of CODE is intricate and intimate, and after getting their diploma, the connections former students have with their Alma Mater don’t just dissolve. But before focusing in on the future, let’s take a quick glance back. Is there something about CODE that helped them move forward after they finished studying?

Constantin: “I think it’s just the CODE platform. So before CODE, I was already registered for Computer Science at another traditional university. I knew Tom Bachem [our chancellor] and thought, ‘Eh, why not take a look at the Admission Day’. Already then, I felt that there was a different type of person interested in CODE than there was at the other university, and that’s what got me to kick my registration for them and join CODE. 

Another thing that really helped in the process was CODE’s cooperation with 42, just getting the opportunity to go to Silicon Valley for a couple months. 

And then, the whole working in small teams on products. There’s very little difference between doing it in a CODE setting and doing it in the real world, so the transition is very smooth. At Blair, we found that our employees coming from a more traditional university setting have a much harder time adjusting than CODE people. They basically sit down and get to work from day one, they’re familiar with all the processes.”

I mean, wow, that sounds great! What about advice? Let’s say you, dear reader, are about to start studying at CODE, or maybe you’re already here (hi!), but you still have plenty of time to go. What should you be considering when you think about how to make your time at CODE really count?

Darleen: “Just make what you want to – what you’re interested in. What’s important for you and what do you want to change? Then tackle this. Think about what makes you happy in your studies and what you want to do in the future. For example, for me, it is a pleasure to work for Between the Lines, and only with CODE did I get the mindset to engage in a non-profit organization as a designer. It’s important that you think about what motivates you.”

Each of our alumni mentioned that one of the great things about CODE was how the work you do here makes for a natural transition into the workforce. So let’s look into that even deeper. How did CODE help you transition into the working world?

Piero: “If you already have a job offer, adapt to the company environment because it’s probably going to be very different from what you were experiencing in university. It’s not as different as at other universities that are mostly theoretical and the shock going to a company is very high. That’s a benefit of CODE, that you actually do the practical stuff during your 3 years there. There is still an adaptation process, but what I learned helped me in my previous job, which in turn helped me in my Amazon interview. The module on distributed processing was particularly special for me.”

As the crack in the dam gets bigger every semester, what else could we say except that CODE is a unique place to get your Bachelor’s for a thousand reasons. We’ll let Constantin sum up our feelings as we close: “At CODE, you turn around and you have 20 people sitting there, very helpful and wanting to get you forward. I think that’s really what CODE is about.”

To learn more about Piero, Darleen and Constantin and what they’re doing now, click on their names.

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Virtual Demo Day was a perfect opportunity to finally introduce our first graduate, Oluwatobi (Tobi) Adeyinka. CODE chancellor and founder, Thomas Bachem, remembered Tobi’s first day at CODE and the moment when we asked students to come up with three hashtags that describe them. Tobi’s hashtags were #empathy #existentialism and #positivity. Three years later, with our first graduate, we want to reflect on this journey.

We’ve said this time and time again: founding a university is not easy. Just having an idea about creating one is already crazy.

But hey, we had the vision to offer something different than traditional universities. By no means did we want to teach just software development or programming. We wanted to move away from frontal teaching and instead offer project-based learning. Then we found a perfect place for the university, the Factory – at that point, soon-to-be a meeting point and vibrant community for many startups and companies in Berlin. But what the heck is all that without students? 

They were mad enough to trust our experiment, our efforts, and eagerness to disrupt the education system, and persistent enough to push us to work more, to improve, and to challenge us, every day.

In the beginning, we went to many student fairs. We’ve seen many halls throughout Germany, carrying large white CODE letters with us, rebuilding our booth every time, wanting to answer every single question and to make ourselves visible.

And then the students came. We always refer to our first generation of around 70 students as the “crazy” ones. Or crazy enough to be guinea pigs to the new way of learning and studying. They were mad enough to trust our experiment, our efforts, and eagerness to disrupt the education system, and persistent enough to push us to work more, to improve, and to challenge us, every day. The very first days and months were hectic. The Factory was still under a lot of construction work, the dust was everywhere, and to be frank, we did a lot of lectures wearing jackets hoping that the sunny and warm days were just around the corner. 

But dreaming about starting a university means that we’ve dreamt about seeing all those students leaving CODE with a lifelong, beneficial relationship between CODE and its community of students, graduates, and partners. It was hard to imagine, back in 2017 – the day will eventually come, and we will have our first graduate(s). And here we are, after existing for three years we have our two graduates, our first alumni: Oluwatobi (Tobi) Adeyinka, who studied Software Engineering, and Elias Khattar, who studied Product Management. 

Originally from Nigeria, in August 7, 2017 Tobi had his first admission day at CODE. September 1, Tobi’s first day at CODE. Three years later, our Tobi is now a successful software engineer developing his career in Berlin. 

A software engineering student and our first graduate, #firstclass, Oluwatobi (Tobi) Adeyinka, is one of the crazy ones, and we hope he doesn’t mind us saying that. Originally from Nigeria, on August 7, 2017, Tobi had his first admission day at CODE. September 1, Tobi’s first day at CODE. Three years later, our Tobi is now a successful software engineer developing his career in Berlin. 

When asked about the attraction he felt towards CODE, Tobi remembers an “efficient approach to studying Software Engineering and the opportunity to jump into real-world projects from the start of your studies.”

At CODE, students start with the Orientation Semester seen not only as a transitional period but also to introduce students to the interdisciplinary study concept of CODE. Our Orientation Semester helps students to choose what they really want to study at CODE, by focusing on a combination of hard and soft skills, which we deem to be essential to study, in particular, to join a project group in a core semester — in any role. We offer them guidance, courses, personal and interpersonal workshops, and project check-ins. After Orientation Semester, comes Core Semester, this is the time when our students acquire new skills, master key concepts, and gain state-of-the-art expert knowledge by working on challenging projects with your fellow students from all three study programs. Our competence framework ensures students to work on projects that challenge them in the fields that they are currently prioritizing. Together with our partners and student teams, Tobi worked on several student projects, Tripme with Trivago and Event-Driven Warehouse with METRO, to name a couple.

Finally, in the Synthesis Semester– we challenge students to apply all the skills and competencies that they have acquired during their time at CODE. Students then create their own project from scratch and put together a team of fellow students. This capstone project will be the final stage of their learning journey at CODE – Bachelor thesis will be the theoretical reflection on a key aspect of the capstone project.

The same way we wanted to have a different university, we also wanted to have a diverse community – to build a community far away from a distanced and alienated group of people that occasionally meets in front of the lecturing rooms. Our students come from more than 60 different countries from all around the world and different walks of life. What brings the community together is a shared passion for digital product development, collaboration, and a drive to disrupt the status quo. Tobi was a big part of that community, too. “People learn in different ways, and at CODE, you are given a high-level framework of the things you need to learn for your degree. Beyond that, the way you learn these things is completely up to you. This creates an environment where people with widely varying ways of learning can still study together and also learn from differing perspectives,” says Tobi. 

Our community is growing, now counting 365 students. Still, it sounds surreal to think where we were (just) three years before. 

Today CODE looks different. We are stretching across around 1300m2, don’t have any issues with the heating, and soon will be getting airconditioning to help us get through the warm summer days (which is an unusual thing for Germany!). Our community is growing, now counting 365 students. Still, it sounds surreal to think where we were (just) three years before. 

Tobi submitted his thesis in November 2019. At the end of December, he spent five semesters at CODE altogether.

And for Tobi, things are going smoothly. He’s now establishing his career under the dynamic Berlin fintech sky. What started as a part-time student job, turned into a full-time position after graduation. Tobi’s perspective on studying at CODE resonates well with what we want to point out to future generations. There’s always a lot of things happening at CODE: new learning opportunities, talks from professionals, and networking events within the industry. As a student, he suggests being vocal about what the most valuable for an individual learning experience is. That way, students shouldn’t lose the primary goal at CODE. “I think what helped me the most was carving out a specific path of exactly what I wanted from CODE right from the start, and sticking to that path throughout my studies,” he concludes. 

We don’t want Tobi to walk away from the CODE community, and we do know for sure, graduation doesn’t mean goodbye, and just to make this official: he’s not wearing that damn academic gown! 

Lead Photo: our first graduate, Oluwatobi (Tobi) Adeyinka. Photo by: Lukas Schramm

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There are so many things we do every day that we take for granted: browsing the internet, texting our friends, scrolling our Instagram feeds, opening the Spotify playlist. But many technology-related actions we do are not accessible to millions of people with disabilities and impairments worldwide. 

Back in 2012, Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) was launched and it has been marked annually every third Thursday of May in order to highlight the need for increased digital accessibility. 

Two CODE students, Maya Alroy, an Interaction Design student, and Tetiana Boliukh, a Product Management student, are definitely the leaders in steering the conversation about accessibility at CODE. 

Along with many efforts within the field, the day promotes real improvements that are helping many people to overcome obstacles when using technology. But despite the improvements and finally opening conversations on the importance of inclusion amongst designers, developers, and tech leaders, there is still a lot of work to do. Here at CODE, we recognize the importance of these conversations, and our students are actively encouraged to co-design more accessible learning journeys that address their individual requirements. We know we could do more. 

Two CODE students, Maya Alroy, an Interaction Design student, and Tetiana Boliukh, a Product Management student, are definitely the leaders in steering the conversation about accessibility at CODE. 

Maya’s interest in the topic comes from a personal perspective; because of her own deafness in one ear she was always more aware of the barriers that technology users might face, but she additionally has the notion to support people through technology. “Through a UX course I started a couple of years ago, I was made aware of the problems that people with disabilities are facing with technology. I started to work on my own sign language app idea, and I continued to work on it during my orientation semester at CODE,” says Maya.

“I always strived for maximum inclusion – every person should be included and feel comfortable in society. That seemed to me like the only fair base,” explains Tetiana. At CODE she met Maya and, learning about her hearing disabilities, she just started to try to observe the world through her perspective. “And then I was thinking: as a product manager, I’m building the product. How can I continue to sleep tight at night knowing that somebody out there is struggling to use that product?” she asked herself.

Maya and Tetiana went together to the A11y Accessibility conference on the accessibility topic last year in Berlin. They both described the event as an inspiring breaking point and warn that there are a lot of disabilities on the spectrum that need to be taken into account. Not all disabilities are visible. For instance, there are also cognitive disabilities/impairments, and simple solutions like a consistent layout and the use of plain language would enable people with different learning disabilities/impairments. 

I was thinking: as a product manager, I’m building the product. How can I continue to sleep tight at night knowing that somebody out there is struggling to use that product?

When she is doing some design work, Maya says that she has a checklist. “I’m checking 1000 times if the colors that I’m using are accessible. I check the contrast and how all this will perform in the screen reader.” 

Maya worked on a research project at CODE to understand more about visual impairments and technology, with support from Tetiana. “I wanted to learn how the eye works… about blindness and color blindness, and how the screen reader works… I went back home to Israel to visit Migdal Or, a multi-service center dedicated to advancing people with blindness or visual impairment towards independent functioning and inclusion in the workplace.” She collected a lot of data, went to many meetups in Berlin, and talked with many inspiring people. She met Matt May, the Head of Inclusion at Adobe at the accessibility conference in Scotland, who talked about how design thinking and empathy aren’t the most effective tools when designing for disabled people – disabled people need to be co-creators of our products and not only our inspiration. 

During the Expo Day in December 2019, Maya showcased the results of her work. “I arranged different posters with quotes, darkened my screen and I opened the screen reader and encouraged people to try it out. It was interesting to see how many people were afraid of leaving their comfort zone. Some students were hesitating. I know I can’t change all of their minds but I just always want to point out a very practical approach: ‘Building a website, it’s like a house. If you build it with no accessibility from the beginning, it will be much harder to fix it.’”

Disabled people need to be co-creators of our products and not only our inspiration. 

Tetiana thinks that the key aspect is to normalize the topic of disability and raise awareness of what is actually happening around us. “You might not know that the person sitting right next to you is facing obstacles you have no idea about.” 

Following Visability93, a design project to raise awareness for invisible disabilities, Maya placed posters on the wall next to the CODE kitchen area with many icons for some of the most common invisible disabilities. Next to the posters, there were stickers so that everybody could put a sticker on the icon they identify with. 

We asked Maya and Tetiana to share a few pieces of advice on how we could all be more aware of accessibility features. “If you are a designer, check the color contrasts. There is so much information online to educate yourself with, so many tutorials for how to execute accessibility tests, and many different plugins that can screen the website and tell you what can be improved. In general, discover the world of accessibility.”

“I often say to Maya, with your hearing aid, you have a superpower… you can make the world louder, quieter, or even completely mute it.” Tetiana makes a final remark and reminds us all that, as a community, we could and should do more.

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With the spread of COVID-19 reaching the level of a global pandemic, it was inevitable for CODE University of Applied Sciences and the digital pioneers that we needed to make some changes. That’s why we decided very early to take action and are now happy to announce that almost all our learning formats take place as usual, but remotely.⁣ It is our responsibility to contribute as much as we can to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Although this poses a big challenge and opportunity to the CODE community, students, faculty and staff, we are working every day on a range of support measures for everyone individually and CODE as a whole to ensure that we maintain a community despite being remote.

So, how are we doing this?

Much more than in physical classrooms – all of a sudden there is an awkward silence. With only one click, students can leave the call without explanation. In-person, students think twice before walking without explanation.

Like many others in this situation, we didn’t have time to plan, but we are aware that, as digital pioneers, we do have an advantage that many other universities and companies don’t have. Earlier in March, from the point when the whole situation started to seem inevitable, we started to think about the equipment. Knowing that our professors will need our full support for the upcoming weeks, we asked them to write down the equipment they need in order to create the best possible learning experience in a remote teaching setup. It seems it’s all about the mic! And, of course, remote conferencing tools.

Online teaching definitely poses a challenge and we do know that through the screen everything fundamentally changes. Our Software Engineering professor Peter Ruppel writes extensively about his experience here on the blog. Even with perfect equipment and tools (and we know that perfection doesn’t exist), there are still obstacles. Much more than in physical classrooms – all of a sudden there is an awkward silence. With only one click, students can leave the call without explanation. In-person, students think twice before walking without explanation. But most importantly, our task now is to create a participatory environment and nurture engaging discussions – there is a moment when sticky notes turn into chat lines.

Students agree that learning units are working really well for now and are mostly positively surprised how smoothly everything has gone in the first few days, while professors and lecturers are giving their best to keep it interactive and engaging. Software Engineering student Maurice says that the learning units were “great and well prepared,” and what was especially valuable for him was the access to different virtual rooms for working in pairs.

Selma, also a Software Engineering student, shared her thoughts on remote teamwork: “We will try out different tools: Google Meet, Tandem, using Notion for documentation; and evaluate each week if it is working for us. Even though we actually did remote meetings before, it still takes quite some time to adjust to the new full remote set up.”

We are helping our students with a few clever tips like staying away from the couch but also super useful ones about the tools they are using, to help them to keep up with the routine, to stay in touch with the team members, and help them to cope with physical distancing.

Julia, a Product Management student, is a team coach and she feared it would be difficult to continue with team coaching remotely, but it turned out to be quite the opposite. “So far our calls seem more efficient than when we meet in person. These calls also reinforced the value of having a moderator or one person who leads the session. However, we are still experimenting with how many (and how long) sessions are required for us to stay aligned and move forward together,” she explains.

We’ve been following many useful resources with practical guides for remote setups. Rule number one: be transparent with our community and give regular updates. Throughout the media, the news is dominated by paranoia, horrifying numbers, and negativity. “CODE has set itself apart from the negativity”, says Graham, an Interaction design student. “Taking decisive and science-based action, creating a support network for all, setting benchmarks for the following weeks, and being transparent all the way throughout. The way that faculty, staff, and a handful of students have taken action to put our campus online is inspiring. The effort to preserve our culture as it is another aspect of our learning experience has reminded me why I study at CODE,” he wrote in a Slack message.

We are helping our students with a few clever tips like staying away from the couch but also super useful ones about the tools they are using, to help them to keep up with the routine, to stay in touch with the team members, and help them to cope with physical distancing.

Strongly believing that nothing can keep the CODE community apart, not even being remote, we do our best to stay connected and keep the CODE spirit up. Every morning, we start the day by sharing helpful ideas and tips for remote working, learning, and living. On Mondays at 5 pm, we have a CODE Spirit Day, during which we do something fun together.

In the meantime, students and staff members are offering different activities to the community: yoga sessions on Wednesdays, daily coffee and lunch breaks, deep-dive sessions where students can focus on their goals and support each other, weekly chess tournaments, and much more. Since that we all miss our campus piano, a couple of students and professors initiated the CODE Italian Balconies project to allow community members to make music together.

We will all get through this together – #CODEremote #staypositive #stayconnected #staymotivated #stayhealthy

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