Integrating vendors educational content and official courses into Russian technical universities' IT curriculums

This article presents the main results of several projects in Russia completed jointly by Multivendor and Academic ICT Consortium, Information & Computer Technologies Industry Association, Cisco, Microsoft, 1C in 2010-2013. It includes concept description of TOP-curriculum, methodology and practical recommendations for integration of vendor-based and traditional academic education systems using educational and methodical materials based upon the competency approach, National and Sectorial ICT Qualification Framework and Professional standards (job profiles). Developed educational modules (TOP-curriculums) have been implemented in 50+ leading technical universities in Russia. For two years it has trained more than 10,000 students and hundreds of teachers. Some methodical developments of TOP-curriculum were used in the new generation of the Federal State Educational Standards for HE and were taken into account in the Tuning Russia project.