A digitization of the society and the automation of many processes bring new opportunities and types of jobs. The number of employees employed in IT sector is continually growing. The employees in European Union urge that there is an increasing lack of IT specialists, mainly in the field of software development, data analysis and data science. The development and evaluation of the proposed educational model is the main objective of the project. The model will provide development of highly specialized skills and competencies of future IT specialists using the developed education model. The model is focused on minimizing a number of students with problems in learning. Increasing a level of the knowledge obtained by the students in the introductory courses focused on development programming skills is necessary for increasing the level of knowledge of highly specialized IT skills, as well as for training students for life-long learning. The features of work-based learning, active learning, collaborative and problem-based learning approaches will be used during this process. The students of accredited study programs create the primary target group. They will be involved directly in the activities, which implement the innovations in the education. A special attention will be given on involving doctoral students into the project’s tasks to improve their teaching skills. During the two years of the active deployment and use of the educational platform, the students will enrol in several courses. Therefore, the total number of students will increase to 1800. The project will focus on activities, which support innovative methods and pedagogical approaches, as well as develop digital educational resources and tools. Applied approaches can be considered innovative because they have not been researched yet in detail. An implemented educational model will utilize the positive features of microlearning, automated programming code assessment, interactivity and immediate feedback. Consequently, the innovative strategy based on the application of the WBL approach to the advanced educational topics will be applied. Development of the educational platform will follow after the initial phase of the project. The development of interactive educational content for learning programming languages will be realised in the first phase. An evaluation of the deliverables of the first phase will follow in the second phase of the project. At the same time, the development of e-learning courses focused on the development of highly specialized IT skills and knowledge using WBL approaches will be realized. The implementation and evaluation of the two-staged model is the main contribution of the project: - The first stage is based on obtaining the basic knowledge and skills by IT students by intensive using of interactive educational content and automated source code assessment created for a set of popular programming languages, all included in the proposed education platform. - The second stage transfers the responsibility for further learning on students. Real world projects with increasing difficulty, which force them to obtain knowledge and skills required by life-long learning of IT specialists after their graduation, are used in this process. Impact of the project - A short term horizon: Developed educational platform will provide a set of innovative educational tools. As a result, the overall quality of training and education of IT students will increase. The portion of students at risk of learning failure will decrease. At the same time, involved students will reach better grading - A long term horizon: A higher level of IT knowledge and skills obtained by target group will create their readiness for the job market. A level of readiness for life-long learning will also increase. - Regional impact – The competitiveness of involved universities will increase in the region because they will provide an innovative approach to IT students’ education based on the students’ expectations and habits. - Regional companies will have the opportunity to employ IT students with a higher initial knowledge. - Educational impact – New methodologies and modernized didactical approaches for IT topics covered by the project will be proposed and evaluated. Improved evaluation methods based on the automation will be used across the whole educational model. The gamification elements, as well as models, which allow to record and analyse a student’s progress and performance and identify situations, which can lead to his/her learning failure, will be evaluated. - Technological impact – Proposed and implemented concept can be applicable in other related disciplines. - Social impact – The number of students, who leave a study due to learning failure, will decrease. Graduates will obtain a higher level of specialized IT knowledge and skills.
The digitisation of society and the automation of many processes bring new opportunities and new types of jobs. The number of people employed in IT is constantly growing. However, employers in all EU countries are announcing a growing shortage of IT specialists in software development that educational institutions cannot meet. The project aimed to design and implement a sustainable educational model ensuring the development of highly specialised skills and competencies of future IT experts in programming and software development. The model contributes to minimising the number of students with educational problems and increases the level of knowledge from introductory computer science courses, which represent a necessary prerequisite for increasing the overall level of highly specialised knowledge and skills of graduates. The educational model implemented in the form of a modern micro-learning platform Priscilla (https://priscilla.fitped.eu) with the support of automated evaluation of student assignments and gamification elements leads to better readiness of students for lifelong learning by applying selected elements of work-based-, collaborative- and problem-based learning in courses. The primary target group of the project are the students of accredited IT study programs of universities, who were involved in the project activities through innovations implemented directly in the educational process. Special attention was paid to the involvement of doctoral students in order to prepare them for the job of a teacher and to enable them to gain experience in working in an international project team. Simultaneously, the secondary school teachers and students were involved in the project through multiplier events, as well as students’ programming competitions held at the universities participating in the project. The Priscilla platform has become an integral part of teaching at the universities participating in the project in study programs to train computer science professionals, teachers and related fields of study. More than 1,700 individual student accounts are registered on the platform. Students have actively participated in most of the created 26 micro-learning courses (3,300 student courses). In terms of the created educational content, the platform provides more than 4,330 micro-learning units, 2,200 automatically evaluated programs, 180 topics in courses based on the WBL strategy and 562 solved student projects from practice within the whole model. The innovativeness of the project lies in the implementation and verification of the model of education based on modern approaches such as micro-learning, gamification, work-based learning and others, which have so far penetrated formal education only sporadically and unsystematically. In accordance with the priorities of the call, activities were built and implemented in the project, which supported the development of innovative teaching methods and pedagogy, created and developed digital educational materials and tools. The procedures applied to achieve the results are innovative and so far in this combination have not been systematically sufficiently explored. During the project realisation, 18 university textbooks were published to acquire knowledge and skills in programming and software development. Simultaneously, several pieces of research were realised aimed at verifying the benefit of the approaches used for the training of IT professionals using the created Priscilla platform and the project outputs. The research confirmed the assumptions and fulfilment of the project objectives. The architecture, experience and partial results were presented in more than ten articles in indexed journals and conference proceedings. The main benefit of the project is the implementation and validation of a two-level model of education. The first level is based on gaining essential knowledge and experience through interactive content and automated evaluation of source codes for different programming languages using an educational platform allowing personalisation and individual approach to each student. The second level transfers responsibility for one's own learning process to the student by forcing him/her to acquire new skills and knowledge through real assignments in a typical way for lifelong learning necessary for his/her professional advancement in IT after graduating from university. Creating a catchment network and a reduction in the number of students at risk of educational failure, as well as achieving a better average evaluation through educational innovation, can be considered the most crucial impact of the project on the target group in the short term. It can be expected to reach a higher level of IT knowledge of students for the labour market and a better level of preparation for lifelong learning together with an increase in the competitiveness of universities in the long-term horizon.