Learning time tracking

This information is relevant for learners who receive the funding from Lithuanian Public Employment Service (UZT)

UZT Requirements for Time Tracking

The full time that a learner needs to study each week in synchronous learning activities is dependant on the program and reflects in your account in Turing College Platform under the “Deadlines” section.

Additionally, UZT has two requirements for minimum attendance in any program:

A learner may not fully miss 5 study days of learning activities in a row without a valid reason.
- Attending for at least 45 minutes in a day, even if more are scheduled, is not considered as a missed day.

A learner may not miss more than 20% of all learning activities without a valid reason. In other words, a learner must track at least 80% of all possible time throughout their full studies.

While everyone can miss up to 20% of all learning hours during their studies, those getting a stipend from UZT would be getting a reduced stipend. I.e. if you attend only 90% of the learning activities in a month, you would get 90% of your stipend that month.

If you have valid reasons for missing activities submitted in the Turing College platform (e.g. incapacity to work), this does not count towards 20% of possible missed time.

Individual UZT schedules

We must ensure that all the tracked learning activity hours happen during times set in advance in your learning schedule (“tvarkaraštis”). Therefore, we have created a system that allows each learner to set their individual schedule and to change it when needed. The amount of hours required for the specific week will be visible in your account on the Platform and you are expected to arrange your schedule by spreading those hours (in academic hours- 45min- intervals) throughout 5 days per week. The schedule is visible under the “Deadlines” section of the platform.

The exact process is:

Each learner first needs to sign a document which confirms that agreeing to calendar changes in the platform is equivalent to a qualified e-signature. This makes it possible to change the calendar without needing to sign a document each time. New learners sign this document when starting their studies.
The platform will guide you through setting hours so that all rules are followed. Once hours are chosen and confirmed by us, we will ask you to confirm these changes.
We will only track time in the hours during which your calendar has learning activities scheduled. Activities that are tracked are: Virtual Classrooms (being in a voice channel and responding to check-in voice pings), Open Sessions, Project reviews, Stand-ups, Workshops, other events organised visible in the platform calendar. If you are in an activity that is happening on Zoom, you do not need to simultaneously be present in Discord as well.
You can choose between updating the schedule for the current week only vs. updating it for the next and the following weeks.
You can change the calendar daily, but you cannot change the current day’s schedule - the closest changes can always take effect only on the next day.

Requirements for individual schedules

Employed learners

Schedule needs to contain the exact number of hours that the platform indicates (this differs based on the program)
Each day must have no more than 9 hours (12 academic hours)
There should be no more than 3 consecutive hours (4 academic hours) of learning
The schedule must contain exactly 5 days with learning activities

You are free to study at any day of the week, weekends included.

Example schedule

Unemployed learners

Schedule needs to contain exactly 30 hours (40 academic hours)
Each day must have no more than 6 hours (8 academic hours)
There should be no more than 3 consecutive hours (4 academic hours) of learning

By the laws of UZT, unemployed learners unfortunately are not allowed to track attendance over the weekend.

Example schedule

Technically, it is possible to vary your attendance each week in order to meet the final average at the end of your studies. However, to minimise unexpected situations where you find yourself unable to meet the requirements, we expect you to spend at least the minimum average of hours each week and inform us via platform chat when you cannot. That way we can help you ensure that you do not accidentally miss the requirement of attending 80% of all learning activities. We may reach out to you directly if we see that you have not met the minimum average requirement.

If you spend more than the minimum required time in a given week, the minimum average for all subsequent weeks would decrease - this would be reflected in the platform.

Example: if you have two weeks of study left and your minimum average per week is 24 hours, by tracking 30 hours in the first week, you would have only 18 hours needed left as a minimum for the second one. This is because both weeks would result in the same 24h/week average: (30+18)/2=24.

Based on UZT rules, a learner may not miss 5 full study days of learning activities in a row without a valid reason. Doing so puts the learner at risk of study contract termination.

A learning activity is counted as attended if you are present in it for 45 minutes or more.
A missed day is only registered if your individual UZT schedule contains learning hours that day and if you do not attend any activities that day.

Example: A learner has an UZT schedule with learning activities only during Mondays-Fridays. If a learner attends an activity on Monday and then stops attending them during all next days, the latest day they need to attend a learning activity again is next Monday in order not to not miss 5 study days in a row. This would result in 4 missed days in a row: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

It is important that no matter when you started your studies, the stipend received from UZT each month depends on the exact number of study hours that were tracked during those months. To get 100% of the stipend, you need to attend 100% of the learning activities, meaning 30 hours per week (assuming no national holidays).

If you choose to study less, such as only meeting the average minimum hours required, your monthly stipend from UZT will be reduced accordingly. For example, if you track only 24 hours each week, which is 80% of the 30 needed hours for full stipend, you would get 80% of your stipend for those weeks.

Learning time cannot be tracked during national holidays. It also means that weeks containing national holidays will have a lower attendance requirement needed to get the full UZT stipend.

The exact requirements of such weeks will be visible to each learner individually in the platform.

While UZT does not grant official vacations, the best solution rests on two conditions:

You still need to participate in at least 1 hour of learning activities during every 5 learning days
With the time missed, you cannot exceed 20% of total learning time of your UZT study period

During vacation, you can track less than your minimum average weekly learning time, but you should keep in mind that in the weeks after your vacation, this minimum should be increased.

Example: You have 10 weeks of study left and your weekly minimum tracked time is 24 hours. In other words, you still have 240 hours of learning time that you need to track. If you go on a vacation for 1 week (and still attend 1 hour of activities to not miss 5 days in a row), you would afterwards have a minimum of 239 hours of study time left over 9 weeks. This results in the minimum increasing to 239/9 = ~26.5 hours of minimum study time per week for the remaining 9 weeks.

Yes, the minimum sprints and the competencies you need to gain for an UZT certificate are not affected by this change.

Additionally, after completing the required number of sprints, the attendance expectations remain the same until the end of the official UZT study period. This allows you to study further and go through additional modules and acquire additional valuable skills.

Learner's Guide 2024