Measuring Attainment and Progress of Learners in Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Measuring Attainment and Progress of Learners in Europe

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

This project builds on the results of the previously successful INGOT, SAFE and GEBOL LDV TOI projects and an extension to the INGOT technologies that produced a spectacular take up of over 60,000 learners, 1000 teachers and 660 secondary schools from a single forum post to a social networking group thus demonstrating a clear demand. It draws on the researched and tested technologies and pedagogical models of previously successful EU co-funded projects and contemporary business development models to provide long term sustainable Open Education Resources and services that underpin progression to nationally and internationally accredited qualifications in Computing at Level 4 and above of the European Qualifications Framework.

The project objectives are
To provide teachers with a “big data” tool for automating progress measures, reducing time spent on administration and transferring this time to teaching which is better informed by empirical data from testing.

To raise levels of digital literacy in schools in order to make people more self-sufficient in their use of technology and less dependent on formal retraining every time there is a shift in the technological ecosystem.

To develop a strategy to support the development of Open Education Resources, including free services founded in a sustainable business model that is self-sustaining.

To gather empirical evidence of what children know and can do in computing (computer science, information technology and digital literacy) in order to feedback to and develop the curriculum based on direct evidence.

The project partners are from the UK, NL, CZ, BG, ES and Si. They represent small business enterprise, a university and a national membership association. They have a wealth of technical and pedagogical expertise and share a collective enthusiasm for practical methods of reducing costs and improving efficiency through the use of free software, OERs and free services supported by a contemporary “freemium” business model.

In this project the focus is on the integration of new pedagogical methods, technical infrastructure and business methods associated with the contemporary internet. disruptive innovation and evidence based pedagogy. Big data provides very clear opportunities to contextualise improved learning through empirical research and we have a proven method of doing this that can scale at low cost to every country in Europe. Activities are focused on collecting evidence from testing what children know and understand about computing before and after formal teaching. In order to take this beyond simple empirical data collection on a large scale we provide the support and infrastructure for free to enable learning and hence improvement in knowledge, understanding and skills. We sustain the project by establishing a low cost on-line certification of attainment and progress for which there will be a charge to the end user of 1 Euro per certificate after the funding period has ended. This is sufficient together with committed private sector sponsorship to maintain the free services that the project will extend from the UK to the partner countries. There are progression routes for students to gain new qualifications, nationally accredited, directly referenced to levels in the EQF, and supporting ECVET and EQARF principles. The associated training and guidance for teachers has been shown to have a multiplying effect and can be extended to all STEM subjects.

Project management was based on sound principles of recognised programmes. The pedagogical method used was assessment based on learning outcomes and competence based criteria supported by comprehensive open source collaborative technologies running in the Cloud. This is complemented by online exams to provide grading. All are OERs and provided with free sustainable support.

The results of the project are shown to have immediate impact by providing free and open education resources as soon as they are developed or linked to the project web site. The project consortium has been strengthen further in its already considerable knowledge of the OER field, testing and assessment pedagogies and technologies and the EQF, EQARF, ECVET and qualifications model. The potential benefits for the longer term are to establish a European standard for assessing attainment and progress based on “big data” sourced and supported using OERs and leading to valued qualifications in computing that shift the expectation to the underlying transferable skills, knowledge and understanding of digital technologies needed in the 21st Century.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 229347 Eur

Project Coordinator

NAACE TRADING LTD & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Stichting Kenniscentrum Pro Work
• The Olympus Academy Trust trading as Abbeywood Community School
• Andragoski zavod Ljudska univerza Velenje
• Euroface Consulting s.r.o.
• Natsionalen ucheben tsentar
• JAITEK TECNOLOGÍA Y FORMACIÓN SL
• The Learning Machine Ltd