Computing Competences. Innovative learning approach for non-IT students

"Coding has become the fourth literacy. Everyone needs to know how our digital world works, not just engineers."" - says Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. In today's digital world, coding is an essential skill alongside math, reading and writing. But the most important thing is not to learn coding itself, but to use it to develop the skills it requires, such as analytical and logical thinking, complex problem solving, creativity, entrepreneurial thinking and skills. Along these lines, the point of the project is not that it will help educate programmers alone, but people who have developed habits of mind that make it easier to function in the modern world. Currently there is a strong trend across Europe to learn programming from an early age. For several years it has been a part of school education. Numerous programming courses for children are available, dedicated e-learning platforms are created, and coding is starting to be treated like learning any other foreign language. However, there is a certain gap in adapting this trend to the requirements and needs of young people (over 18 years old), who are just entering the labor market and who most urgently need computer thinking skills. Therefore, in this project we supported non-computer students. Target group: - Non-IT students who want to improve their coding, computational thinking and problem-solving competences: more than 300 peopleMain objective: To increase innovation and interdisciplinarity in higher education by developing and evaluating the effectiveness in at least 4 European universities of a programming course for non-IT students by 07.2021. Specific objectives: - Strengthen cooperation between partner institutions, increase their internationalization through exchange of good practices and joint development of universal educational materials. - Promotion of the idea of open education and open source software. - Increase the quality and usefulness of students' knowledge (at least 150 students participating in testing and evaluation).Description of implemented activities: The consortium has implemented all the activities assumed in the project. Developed 1 programming course for non-IT students consisting of:- Interactive online textbook, consisting of 2: Part A, part 12 introductory lessons, Part B will be 5 parallel topics, 6 lessons in length (30 lessons in total).- Programming exercises (5 assignments for each lesson, so 60 assignments for Part A and 150 for Part B)- Automated grading and assessment system. Long-term benefits:- inclusion of a programming learning component in the curricula implemented at partner universities- Increasing the number of students of non-IT faculties who have basic knowledge of programming in Python language and skills of practical use of the acquired knowledge;- developing the idea of digitalization within modified/new curricula implemented/developed at partner institutions."