Developing an innovative electronics curriculum for school education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing an innovative electronics curriculum for school education

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 2018

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Project background:
The basics of electronics and programming appear in numerous fields, the need for such experts is constantly growing.
High school students interested in technical fields often build electronic devices, and strive to learn the fundamentals of electronics. Unfortunately, because of the complexity of the subject, without a guide the learning process often leads to a dead-end.
There are devices suitable for teaching programming, however, these are based on complex hardware, and thus the inner workings, and the connection between hardware and software cannot be understood using them.

Number and type of participants:
The coordinator of the 5-party partnership is a Hungarian professional electronics development company, whose main tasks are creating a multilingual curriculum, and the dissemination of project results. Further members of the partnership are 3 high schools, and one foundation of a high school (2 Slovakian, 1 Romanian, and 1 Hungarian institutions).

Description of goals and tasks:
A needs assessment conducted by the partnership confirmed that there is a need in school education for a comprehensive curriculum, which guides students from understanding the mathematical foundation through using electronic parts and tools to realizing basic control structures in easy-to-understand, incremental steps.
The goal of the two years of the project was to create a multilingual, 24-part electronics curriculum aimed for high school students. A planned table of contents, two sample parts of the planned 24, and a list of electronic parts and tools have already been completed in advance. An innovative property of the curriculum is that every part is illustrated with real world examples, which the students can try out themselves.
During the project the curriculum was tested by high school students with the supervision of the partner institutions. In the first 9 months the first version of the curriculum was completed, and was simultaneously tested by the students. In the second, 6-month long period the second, improved version of the curriculum was prepared using the feedback acquired. At the same time, the writing of the first English version of the curriculum started, so the partner institutions could start testing them in time (September 2019). In the last 9-month period the improved curriculum (after multiple iterations) in English was completed.
The full curriculum is available for free on the project website, which the partnership continues to maintain after the project period.

Project management methodology:
The schedule was governed by the dependencies of the tasks, and the critical tasks, thus the partnership uses the “critical path method” (CPM).
Most of the tasks consist of planning, creating, and detailed testing of the curriculum, making this area require extra attention. The curriculum can be considered the product of a classic “product development” process, thus the partnership used the “V-model”, which is commonly used during technical development. The steps of this model gave a well-defined framework for the tasks, helping the completion according to plan.

Short description of results, their expected effect, and possibility of long term utilization:
The most prominent result of the project is the innovative electronic curriculum, which contains 24 chapters full of practical examples with a total of approximately 440 pages. Other results are the 4 (out of the planned 6, due to the coronavirus pandemic) complex animation events (consultation and information days, exhibitions), 1 (instead of 2) summer educational event, and their reports, numerous dissemination materials.
As an indirect outcome of the project the skills and knowledge of the students have expanded. Not only the project partners, but all educational sectors also have access to the curriculum. The multilingual nature creates the possibility for usage throughout the whole European Union. The curriculum helps students make an informed decision about their career choices. More students will choose a profession related to the field of electronics, and fewer students will leave their profession of choice during or after higher education.
We started the intensive dissemination during the publication of the Hungarian chapters in the summer of 2019, since then the Hungarian Facebook page of the curriculum has 8700 followers, the curriculum was downloaded from the website roughly 2050 times. Based on these, it can be concluded that the values estimated during the preliminary needs assessment have a good chance to be realized in the future. Similarly, the intensive dissemination of the English curriculum was launched during the publication of the improved curriculum in the summer of 2020. Despite the short duration, we already have 4000 followers here, so we expect a significant impact here in the future as well. (The numbers here show the situation as of October 2020)

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 155066 Eur

Project Coordinator

XTALIN Engineering Limited & Country: HU

Project Partners

• BOLYAI FARKAS HIGH SCHOOL
• ELTE Bolyai János Gyakorló Általános Iskola és Gimnázium
• Gymnazium Hansa Selyeho s vyucovacim jazykom madarskym, Ul. Biskupa Kiralya 5, Komarno
• Nadácia Pro Ratio