The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Digital Transformation recently presented the first results of their project to modernize school courses on Informatics.The representatives of education and the tech industry were involved in the work of the project.
The project, which was launched in September, involves 50 schools, 70 teachers, and over 3,000 students. Schools were selected for the project from a pool of 405 applications, with representation from villages and towns (28%), cities (34%), regional centers (26%), and the capital (12%).
The project has been led by leading Ukrainian experts. They elaborated educational content and effectively implemented innovative and digital technologies in teaching and assessing the students of grades 1-11.
Lviv IT Cluster involves specialists from the association’s member companies to review and give an expert assessment of the educational materials.
“Our mission is to develop the industry, particularly through education. We continue to actively work together with the Ministries’ workgroup, firstly, to raise the quality level of teaching Informatics for children, and secondly, to make it more engaging and up-to-date. As of now, 43 experts from 24 member companies of the Lviv IT Cluster are ready to review and assess the innovative educational materials that have been prepared,” says Julia Tsymbala, Lviv IT Cluster Education Lead.
According to a survey of teachers at pilot schools, students and teachers have been using new materials that substitute traditional textbooks at a rate of 50-70% during the first term of the 2022-2023 academic year.
The pilot project content for this term includes 73 classes featuring:
- 15 animated videos;
- 8 motivational videos with tech experts;
- 40 instructive additional screencasts;
- theoretical materials;
- interactive exercises;
- testing tasks.
“One of the four strategic goals of the Ministry of Digital Transformation is to raise the tech industry’s share in the country’s GDP to 10%. We want a billion companies to be created in our country and the number of specialists increase by two or three times. I am convinced that the updated IT Studies project in Informatics will be the first step to helping students confidently enter the tech industry, engage them in learning, use the internet for personal growth and achieve goals. And in the future — creating products in Ukraine that will become known all over the world,” says Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister — Minister of Digital Transformation.
During the next academic year, the updated course will be available to all schools, and 4 million students will have the opportunity to improve their digital literacy. Both teachers and students will have free online access to the course.
The pilot project Updated Informatics — IT Studies is implemented on the initiative of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Education as part of the EU4DigitalUA program financed by the European Union.