Coding for Adults

Programming is an amazing tool that affects our daily life in so many ways. Programs can control robots that explore the surface of the planet Mars or help care for elderly people. Computers have evolved and have become part of not only almost everyone’s work life but also of almost every other aspect of life such as entertainment, health, finances, shopping, traveling, etc. They are in our phones, our watches, our cars, our home appliances, our entertainment systems, and even in our work tools. In all EU countries, we have a rising demand for skilled workers who can program computers; however, the gap between the skills needed and those with the skills is growing every year. As our societies are flooded with new technology every year the importance of knowing how to code becomes more and more apparent. We see growing opportunities for those who have at least a basic understanding of coding skills. Computational thinking and programming skills are not only very important key competences everyone should learn nowadays, they are also essential for an increasing amount of jobs in today's economy which is why we wanted to help learners acquire programming skills amd career orientation in this project.

The partners wanted to give adult learners the opportunity to acquire coding skills that can help them in their personal development. For many adults acquiring coding skills is difficult and confusing. The question where to start is not easy to answer. We provided a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in which learners can gain basic coding skills for free. MOOCs have become widely accepted in education and in 2018 the number of learners using MOOCs has crossed 100 million. Our MOOC takes learners from the beginning to a solid understanding of coding and gives them plenty of opportunities to practice, offering highly relevant exercises that are practical in everyday life and help the learners to learn computational thinking and how to program. Learners can start the MOOC without any previous knowledge about coding, as it covers the basics. We ran several courses based on our MOOC.

The partners wanted to give adult learners the opportunity to acquire coding skills that can help them in their personal development. For many adults acquiring coding skills is difficult and confusing. The question where to start is not easy to answer. We implemented the activities of developing, creating, hosting and disseminating our project result, a MOOC that will help adult learners acquire basic programming skills and get an orientation on how the skills can be used in further careers. We created a learning concept, concepts for each lesson, the actual instructional videos for the MOOC, exercises for practicing coding skills and career guidance. We then compiled everything in a MOOC and set it up for learners to use freely. We also ran guided learning courses to support learners in acquiring the knowledge but also to test our materials and revise them.

The main output of the project was the MOOC which we shared with adult learners through our networks. We also ran courses directly (with the Ministry of Education in Aruba) in which we taught adult learners with the help of the MOOC and tutors who were there to help out in person. We used these courses to observe the learners and improve the MOOC based on which parts were difficult for the learners or which parts were too easy. We ended up cutting a lot of content that ended up being too easy and we also revised parts that our test learners had a hard time understanding. We ended up with a few hundred learners who did the course and received a learning certificate from us.