Andrej Hlasnik

Graduate Diploma in Information Technology

Slovakia

Information Technology student Andrej Hlasnik is learning new things each day at OPAIC and using his impressive work background to help other students succeed.

Andrej has worked at major IT companies throughout Europe but has yet to gain a qualification. He put his study on hold when he landed his first job at multinational tech company IBM in 2007.

Since then he’s been a software engineer at Accenture in Prague and worked at a smaller Prague-based IT company called Con4PAS.

He and his wife decided to move to New Zealand after coming here on holiday in 2018.

“We loved the country. We loved the people here.”

Andrej wanted to finally complete his education and saw that the Graduate Diploma in Information Technology at OPAIC offered courses in important areas such as data science, the internet of things, and mobile applications.

“They are courses that are very needed currently.”

He says he arrived to a lovely Orientation week.

“I got all the information from the beginning. It was great.”

The learning style at OPAIC was different to what he was used to. There were two very intensive subjects per study block, rather than several a semester, allowing students to delve more deeply into each.

“I really like it because you can focus on one paper, or one subject. It makes more sense I think.”

He says there were only 12 or 13 people in each class.

“That’s great because you can talk with the lecturer about things which you would like to know.”

Andrej had a few subjects which he already knew about, but some subjects were completely new to him.

“It was a great decision to study here.”

He especially likes the employability services on offer at OPAIC, which are preparing him for work.

“You learn a lot of things that are really special to the work environment here.”

Andrej also works as a peer tutor here at OPAIC. He has experience teaching developers in Saudi Arabia, so knew how difficult it could be to explain concepts to people with different levels of knowledge and even different languages.

“I’ve seen the same thing here. We have different students from around the world with different backgrounds, different knowledge levels, and sometimes you have to change the way you explain things.”

He likes seeing the progress other students make, particularly when they start to understand and apply concepts.

“That’s a great feeling that you can help someone to understand something and you can see that it has a meaning.”

Find out more about the Graduate Diploma in Information Technology.