With EU support, Mintsyfra and MES presented the primary results of the pilot project Updated Informatics — IT-studios

The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine within the framework of the EU4DigitalUA programme, funded by the European Union, presented the primary results of the pilot project Updated Informatics — IT studios and the outcomes of the first quarter of the 2022-2023 academic year.

Updated Informatics – IT-studios involves leading Ukrainian experts to create educational content, effectively applying the latest digital technologies in teaching, learning, and assessment of students from 1 to 11 grades. It is also planned to involve representatives of IT clusters and IT associations of Ukraine, who are ready to provide technological expertise in creating new topics that were not previously included in the school subject Computer Science.

“One of the four strategic goals of the Ministry of Digital Transformation is to increase the share of the IT industry in the country’s GDP to 10%. We want billion-dollar companies to be created in our country, and the number of specialists to increase in two or three times. I believe that updated Computer Science classes will be one of the first steps to help students enter IT with confidence. So that they are interested in learning, using the Internet for their development and achieving goals. And later — to create products in Ukraine that will become famous in the world,” said Deputy Prime Minister–Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov.

The project started in September. 50 schools, 70 teachers and over 3000 students participate. Schools were selected from 405 applications for participation. There are 28% of institutions from villages, towns and urban-type settlements, 34% of institutions from cities, 26% of institutions from regional centres and 12% of institutions from the capital.e

Remі Duflot, Deputy Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, noted: “Digital education is of utmost importance for a digital Ukraine. The success of the digital society and economy and the sustainability of Ukraine’s digital success story will depend on its youth. Digital competence is both a requirement and a right of citizens to be competitive in the digital society. Therefore, our EU4DigitalUA programme continues to make every effort to support the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Ministry of Education and Science to ensure sustainable development of digital education in the long run”.

According to the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation for European Integration Valeria Ionan, today more than ever it is necessary to get rid of outdated approaches: “We will train not “users”, but “creators of digital content”. We want every student to be able to create digital environments and digital content. This will help them to develop, acquire and deepen their knowledge. That is why the updated Computer Science is called IT-studios”.

A survey conducted among teachers based on the results of the first quarter of the 2022-2023 school year showed that children and teachers were happy to use innovative educational materials that replace textbooks by 50-70%.

The content of the 73 lessons of the pilot project consists of:

• 15 animated videos;
• 8 motivational videos with IT experts;
• 40 instructional supporting screencasts;
• theoretical materials;
• interactive exercises;
• test tasks.

“For teachers, the Computer Science subject is one of the most difficult in the school curriculum. Since teachers need to constantly update their knowledge and undergo retraining, textbooks quickly become outdated, and new relevant topics appear every year. Currently, the approach to learning Computer Science is changing with maximum focus on practice, the use of modern educational platforms and interesting tasks for children,” informed Dmytro Zavhorodniy, Director General of the Directorate for Digital Transformation of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

EU4DigitalUA established the office of the project and involved the best European and Ukrainian IT experts to create high-quality content for students from the 1st to the 11th grade. The programme conducted a research on dozens of teaching platforms to provide the best practices for IT-studios, as well as assist with the creation of digital competencies frameworks to define the combination of knowledge and skills that students should possess.

Next school year, after the pilot, it is planned to scale the updated course to all schools, so that 4 million students can learn digital literacy. The course will be freely available online for all Сomputer Science teachers and schoolchildren of Ukraine.