Enhancement of STEAM Teachers’ Discipline- Specific Pedagogies through Robotic and Coding Curriculum Embedded in Online Environment Erasmus Project

Project Title

Enhancement of STEAM Teachers’ Discipline- Specific Pedagogies through Robotic and Coding Curriculum Embedded in Online Environment

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

The 21st century has been an era of technological advances that have surpassed previous decades. Currently, we’re seeing robotics and coding set on a trajectory to impact wide-ranging fields such as medicine & medical, industry, military. Similarly, robotics and coding in the field of education are affected by these developments. The use of robots in education has attracted the attention of many researchers and trainers at all levels, from kindergarten to higher education, due to recent developments in hardware and software tools (Alimisis, 2013; Xia & Zhong, 2018). ICT knowledge is so-called the oil of the XXI. With the popularization of STEAM approaches in education, the use of robots in education is often used in science, mathematics and technology teaching. Actually, the use of robots in education takes place in an interdisciplinary position and therefore has the potential to use in different learning areas.

The development of individuals with these 21st-century skills will play an important role in meeting the labour market needs in many areas mentioned above. The training of these individuals will only be provided by well-structured training settings. In order to provide these environments, EU countries make investments to integrate robotics and coding into educational curricula. OECD reports show that the rhythm of investments in technology is generally impressive in order to facilitate adoption in the school sector, but this does not match the expectations in the adoption of technology by the teachers and students and their ability on the integration of the technology into educational activities.

As stated in the OECD report, the inability of teachers and students to integrate robotics and coding knowledge into their own learning processes is an important problem. When we consider the underlying reason of this problem, it is understood that there is no discipline-specific curriculum related to robotics and coding and the learning materials for the students of STEAM teachers and for their classes. It has been carrying out with copy-paste training materials and course plans, regardless of the students’ STEAM needs.The reflection of this problem on STEAM teachers has two main dimensions.
*The first problem is the lack of basic knowledge and skills about robotics.
*The second one is the lack of competences on integrating this basic knowledge and skills in field teaching.

The use of robotics in education has an interdisciplinary feature. Therefore, science, mathematics and information technology teachers have serious problems in integrating robotic applications into teaching activities because the STEAM disciplines need to be brought together in order to achieve this integration. Just because of these reasons; the BIG idea underlying RoboCode is: “to gain knowledge and inspire STEAM teachers supported by the state of art curriculum developed with the approach of Bottom-up methodology, online resources and standards resulting in delivery of a series of high impact under school education and to affect policy-making in teaching robotics and coding. The genuine innovation in this project is that the STEAM teachers will be able to get a cirriculum+framework+ state of art materials+self-assessment tool+ E-Learning Platform to integrate the robotics and coding knowledge into teaching their own discipline. All these outputs will be developed by international subject-matter experts thus they will rebuild the capacity to educate students of the 21st century.
Therefore, project RoboCode mainly aims to;
* Train STEAM teacher in terms of discipline-specific approaches to robotics and coding
* Raise the quality of education in schools and strengthen teachers’ domain-specific skills
* Contribute internationalization and standardization of the robotics and coding curriculum

All the activities and outputs of the RoboCode have been produced in order to create excellent results and impacts on school education.
Tasks and the overall management plan is defined in steps and in a logical manner clearly. The entire methodology is based on the determination of clear stages, common responsibilities and clear distributed coordination roles according to the expertise and balance between the partners to guarantee of a perfect execution structure.
Three instructional technologies department of Universities, one district directorate of national education, one public school have been joined their expertise to create; curriculum(IO1)+framework(IO2)+ state of art materials(IO3)+self-assessment tool(IO4)+E-Learning Platform (IO5). Besides, there will be 5 well-structured partner meetings to maximise communication and collaboration. Project monitoring and evaluation plans and strategies have been set to avoid the risks that could be faced during project. Non-stop dissemination activities and 5 multiplier events planned to ensure everybody can access and benefit from the project ‘RoboCode’.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 191870 Eur

Project Coordinator

Osmangazi Ilce Milli Egitim Mudurlugu & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Academy for International Science and Research
• BURSA ULUDAG UNIVERSITESI
• UNIVERZA V MARIBORU
• LETTERKENNY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
• FabLab Nordvest