Software Development Academy

Photo: Richard Ryan

The SDA project has been completed and the training program will no longer be given.

The program is about re-skilling newcomers with academic background in a university setting. Fifteen weeks of intensive training and 550 hours of practicing programming prepares the candidate to work as a software developer.

The program consists of 7 modules: 

• Programing Foundations
• Software Engineering
• Programming in Depth
• Individual Project
• Frontend Development
• Backend Development
• Final Group Project

Each module is designed around a set of learning objectives that contributes towards the basic skills required for a junior software developer. In parallel with the IT training, job matching is conducted by the recruitment company Novare Potential, which also provides the participants with training in IT reqruitment skills and Swedish workplace culture.

During the program, the participants' progress is continuously evaluated by quizes and self-estimating questionnaires. Teachers analyze these results every week and continuously adjust the content to maximize each individual's acquisition of knowledge.

Software Development Academy, was established in spring 2017 in Stockholm. Autumn 2019 the first iteration outside of Stockholm took place in Lund. Since spring 2020, when Covid-19 hit the world, the program transformed to a digitized online program with national admission.

*Numbers presented are pre-Covid 19. The participation got affected during iteration 7-9 and the possibility to get a job also dropped, but is picking up now.

Deshna Safar, born in Syria

"Most useful for me was learning about agile methodology, which is used in almost all development companies. SDA also introduced us to the latest updates in tech world and taught us how to deal in teams which I find is a realy valuable thing."

Selected Publications

M. Wiggberg et al., "Effective Reskilling of Foreign-Born People at Universities - The Software Development Academy," in IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 24556-24565, 2022, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3152194.

Glassey, R., & Bälter, O. (2020). Put the students to work: generating questions with feedback. In 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (in press). IEEE.

Glassey, R., Bälter, O., Haller, P., & Wiggberg, M. (2020). Addressing the Double Challenge of Learning and Teaching Enterprise Technologi es through Peer Teaching. In 2020 IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET) (in press). IEEE.

Glassey, R., Wiggberg, M., & Haller, P. (2018). Agile and Adaptive Learning via the ECK-model in the Software Development Academy . In EC-TEL (Practitioner Proceedings). (PDF document)

Glassey, R., Wiggberg, M., & Bälter, O. (2021). Reduced Learning Time with Maintained Learning Outcomes. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (PDF document)

Media

Sweden’s Economy Is Getting a Lift From Migrants (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Nyanlända snabbutbildas i IT på KTH (Sveriges Radio)

KTH utbildar nyanlända i programmering (Campi, KTH)

It-utbildning för nyanlända igång (Campi, KTH)

Sweden’s Economy Is Getting a Lift From Migrants (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Financial support

Teaching Team