1. THE USE OF E-LEARNING IN THE FIELD OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION OF INFORMATICS TEACHERS Dušan Vučković – Faculty of Electronics, Niš Dragan Janković – Faculty of Electronics, Niš Katarina Milanović – Microsoft d.o.o. 7th Workshop "Software Engineering Education and Reverse Engineering“ Risan, September 2007

2. Contents  Microsoft and education in Serbia  Cooperation between Microsoft and Faculty of Electronics in Niš  Education of high school teachers  eLearning education of teachers  VB.NET eLarning course – experiences  What next?  Conclusion

3. Microsoft and education in Serbia  Signed Memorandum of Understanding with Ministry of Education and Sports in 2004  Promotion of digital literacy  One of the main Microsoft activities: Organisation of free courses for continuous education of teaching staff

4. Serbian MoE Strategy  Based on EU documents, Education development strategy from 2005 to 2010 formulated, Serbian Ministry of Education and Sports defines: the concept of continuous education of teachers is a part of overall policy and strategy of training and vocational education development  Continuous education of informatics teachers is necessary because of the frequent changes in informatics curricula, in accordance with the changes in the field of informatics

5. Cooperation and  In 2004. –Microsoft IT Academy established at the Faculty of Electronics  In 2005. – Cooperation between Microsoft and Faculty of Electronics regarding education of teaching staff  Several courses for teachers and professors of elementary and high schools in Serbia organized  Transition to e-learning courses in 2006

6. Continuous developement of informatics teachers – the needs  Computer science is an elective subject from 1 st to 8 th grade in Serbia  In high school, informatics is a regular subject (state approved program) in the 9 th and the 10 th grade of K-12 (computer literacy) and through various subjects of the 11 th and the 12 th grade (different programs and the number of classes depending on the educational profile, but generally dedicated to learning of programming and the implementation of specialized software packages in vocational subjects)  37,372 FTE teachers in high schools  2,000 informatics teachers in Serbia

7. Classic education  Higher number of attendees from Serbia  Free of charge courses  Results of education – good  Weaknesses – small number of attendees  Absence from work – class compensation  Significant T&E for schools or attendees

8. eLearning education  eLearning VB.NET course prepared based on Microsoft materials  Learning materials for teachers (attendees)  Learning materials and Web site for students  LMS distrubution and testing  Homework  Forum exchange experiences (best and worst practise) plus online community formed  Final examination of new aplication  Top list and prizes for motivation

9. LMS implementation  Enables easy remote distribution of e- learning content that can be employed in many ways  Possibility of individualized courses for continuous education of teaching staff  Results of learning are tracked and recorded in the database of continuous education of teaching staff and can be analyzed

10. Goal and resources of the course  The goal of the online course – training of informatics teachers to help them provide quality programming teaching in VB.NET programming language  We have author learning materials for students and teachers  VB.NET course is diveded into 12 units  Number of tests: 12  One individual final aplication in VB.NET

11. Portal

14. Number of page viewings per lesson

15. Cumulative number of page viewings

16. Certificates

17. Results  Number of attendees - 369  Number of certified attendees - 75  Attendees from all around Serbia (Novi Sad, Gračanica, Kraljevo, Smederevo..)  Overall satisfaction high  Interest for new courses  Significant experience in organizing new eLearning courses

18. Experiences  The teachers were not motivated for obtaining the certificate that is not acknowledged by the accreditation system for teachers in Serbia  The course duration of 4 months, with 12 units together with the tests and multiple working tasks (around 40 hours of work for teachers) was too long

19. More statistics and conclusion  Necessary investments in continuous education of teachers  Necessary investments in continuous education of informatics teachers  E-learning is practical solution for continuous education