Best Practices in Informatics Education

Technocamps is a pan-Wales STEM outreach programme founded and based at Swansea University and with hubs in every university in Wales, UK. Established in recognition of the challenges to keep up with advances in digital education, it engages with the nation’s primary and secondary schools, teachers, school leavers, adult learners, and businesses.

Summary of achievements:

• Led in reforming the ICT subject, defining and implementing a new statutory bilingual Digital Competence Framework (DCF) for all pupils in Wales aged 3 to 16.
• Led on embedding the DCF in schools by delivering over 10 hours of workshops in each of 97% of the nation’s secondary schools.
• Supported a major 2018 sector review of ICT qualifications in Wales and assisted in creating innovative General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and A-Level qualifications in Digital Technology.
• Developed the new Science & Technology Area of Learning and Experience in the new Curriculum for Wales, which brings together biology, chemistry, computer science, design & technology, and physics for all learners aged 3 to 16.
• Engaged deeply with over 65,000 young people since 2011, with a nearly-even gender balance, to create an interest in the subject, particularly amongst young girls.
• Trained to accredited award level over 100 teachers across Wales who lack a formal ICT/Computing background yet teach these subjects due to the shortage of qualified teachers.
• Technocamps' Institute of Coding in Wales drives business innovation through fully-funded CPD opportunities like trailblazing Degree Apprenticeships and micro-credentials, saving companies money—one project saved £400,000 annually.

View full submission and measures of impact:

CyberChallenge.IT is a training program designed to address the IT workforce shortage by identifying, attracting, recruiting and placing the next generation of cybersecurity professionals in Italy.

The project aims to create and grow the cyberdefender community by investing in young talent. In particular, it aims at:

• stimulating interesting technical-scientific subjects and, in particular, in information technology topics;
• presenting the professional opportunities offered by the training courses on information security;
• putting young people in direct contact with companies;
• identifying young cyber talents and contributing to their orientation and professional training.

The program combines traditional training activities with a gamified approach that translates into participation in competitions in simulated networks and work environments. The proposed model leverages gaming to attract young talent while offering a significant multidisciplinary training on technical, scientific and ethical issues related to information security, alternating theoretical lectures and hands-on experiences on various topics such as cryptography, malware analysis, and web security.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Master of IT is an educational cooperation between three universities in Denmark, offering a lifelong learning part-time master’s degree programme for IT professionals to help close the digital talent gap. With 30 courses (15 ECTS each), students can customize their degree or focus on specific subjects at their own pace, which they find relevant for their lifelong learning. The Master of IT attracts students from various age and experience in the educational path, with 55% of them aged 40-60. From 2006 to 2024, over 2000 IT professionals from diverse sectors, including business, public sectors, finance, healthcare and education, participated in courses covering IT teaching, development, management, security and implementation.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Founded in 2015, Welcome.TU.code offers refugees and individuals without access to computer science an opportunity to further their education and improve future prospects. Originally offering free Informatics courses to unaccompanied adolescent refugees aged between 14 and 18, the program has developed to cater to all people, mainly from migrant or financially disadvantaged backgrounds. Welcome.TU.code offers basic informatics workshops, an introduction to software and hardware, and programming, with formats and tracks ranging from beginners to advanced coding.

Welcome.TU.code courses and workshops are led by students who are supported by tutors and supervisors. On the one hand, students have greatly profited from these courses by learning more about different cultures and being exposed to heterogeneity in terms of language, education level and country of origin, which they otherwise would not experience in everyday life. On the other hand, the participants benefit from exposure to diverse cultures and backgrounds, fostering mutual learning and inclusion.

View full submission and measures of impact:

InventEUrs, a European Erasmus+ project, promotes Global Citizenship Education and social inclusion by using Collaborative Digital Storytelling and Creative Computing in schools with high percentages of newly arrived migrant children. The project aims to replicate the success of “Inventors4Change”, which has been carried out with underprivileged schools in Catalonia, India and Colombia.

Through InventEUrs and its GlobalChangemakers platform, thousands of children worldwide have connected, discussed Sustainable Development Goals, learned coding, and co-created digital stories and animations about the topics they researched.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Tinkering is a playful and experimental approach, characterised by iterative engagement in which makers continually reassess goals, explore new paths and imagine new possibilities. This approach was used to teach programming for students enrolled at “Creative Technology” Bachelor’s programme, allowing students to choose their own design goals and path, within a provided context. Ownership and responsibility are key factors in motivating students, from beginners to advanced learners. In addition to programming skills, Tinkering supports basic scientific activities such as questioning, observing, reflecting, and hypothesizing, making it an effective academic teaching method.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Class’Code is a free blended learning program for teachers, educators and children activity organizers to introduce Informatics to children aged 8 to 14. Topics include creative programming, information coding, familiarization with networks, fun robotics, and the societal impacts of technology. Since September 2016, the program has reached 15,000 subscribers and around 3.200 learners attended the meetings regularly across France through over 40 local structures.

The project is supported by academic and industrial federations in computer science, led by the SIF (Société informatique de France) and managed by INRIA (the French Research Institute in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics). Magic Makers oversees pedagogy, Open Classrooms drives the production while the deployment on the territories is under the leadership of Les Petits Débrouillards association.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Initiated in 2008, the ALaDDIn project (LAboratory for Dissemination and Didactics of INformatics) aims to transform how Informatics is taught and perceived, with special attention to K-12 non-vocational schools. Since 2011, it has promoted Informatics in schools through playful activities via the so-called algomotricity teaching methodology, which has a solid theoretical foundation in experiential learning theory and problem-based learning and standing out by its clear didactical design. An important aspect of the approach is the focus on exploration and scientific inquiry applied to computing topics. By 2016, almost 3,000 pupils have participated in ALaDDIn's workshops, and more than 500 teachers have been exposed to the methodology.

View full submission and measures of impact:

The Bebras International Contest on Informatics and Computer Fluency (Bebras) is an international initiative to promote Informatics and computational thinking among school teachers and students as well as the public at large. Bebras members organize easily accessible and highly motivating online contests in many countries. Participants are usually supervised by teachers who may integrate the Bebras challenge into their teaching activities. The challenge is performed at schools using computers or mobile devices.

Founded in Lithuania in 2004, Bebras has grown rapidly to attract over 2.5 million participating students in 2024 in 87 member countries and is considered as the largest computer science competition in the world. In addition, Bebras members provide contest-related teaching material to schools, and are engaged in teacher education and promotion of Informatics education in general. Typically, national Bebras activities are supported by the government, universities, research institutes, or computer societies.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Computing At School was formed in 2008 by a small group of individuals from a range of sectors concerned about the inadequate teaching of Computer Science (Informatics) in schools. Its mission is to provide leadership and strategic guidance to all those involved in Computing education in schools, with a significant but not exclusive focus on the Computer Science theme within the wider Computing curriculum.

Six years after its inception, the landscape has been transformed by CAS’s efforts:

• The English National curriculum for ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has been completely reformed, and now explicitly embodies Computer Science as a foundational part of the curriculum, starting from primary school.
• In 2008 there were no General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs) (age-16 national examinations) in Computer Science. Now every awarding body offers such a GCSE.
• CAS is now an online community of over 12,000 members. It supports over 100 face-to-face teacher “hubs” that meet regularly to share best practice.
• The government is funding CAS to run a national programme of training for Computing teachers, to give them the knowledge and skills they need to deliver the new curriculum with confidence.

CAS membership is open to everyone, and includes teachers, parents, governors, exam boards, industry, professional societies, and universities. CAS is now recognised as an influential organisation in terms of policy and decision-making at a statutory level. In addition, CAS is the UK national subject association for teaching computing.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Informatyka + is one of the largest outreach projects in Poland, run by the Warsaw School of Computer Science (WWSI) and funded by the EU. It was addressed to high school students in five regions in Central and Eastern Poland and more than 1000 high schools, 17.000 students, and 300 teachers participated in this project in 2008-2012.  The project’s main goals were to:

• elaborate and implement innovative methods of teaching and learning key competencies in Informatics and its applications;
• improve and extend school students’ activities in developing key competencies in Informatics and its applications;
• extend students’ interests in job market expectations and better preparation for their future choices of professional development;
• provide opportunities for talented and gifted students to improve their Informatics interests and competencies, in particular for those students who are interested in taking part in numerous Informatics competitions;
• improve students’ school achievements (measured by school grades) in Informatics and other related subjects;
• provide schools with open education content in Informatics and its applications;
• introduce school students to an academic type of instruction which differs significantly from school lessons;
• develop teachers’ competences in working with students talented in Informatics.

Within the project, students participated in 2-hour lectures, 2-hour lectures with 3-hour computer workshops, 24-hour intensive workshops, competitions like the Informatics Olympiad, Beaver, and 3D graphics/web contests, summer computing camps combining vacation activities with lectures, workshops, and online competitions.
Additionally, in-service courses were provided to help teachers enhance their skills in supporting gifted students interested in advanced Informatics.

View full submission and measures of impact:

A new multi-sensory method to improve teaching-learning of recursive algorithms engages students' visual, auditory, and kinesthetic senses. Each algorithm contains a "loop skeleton" representing its loop structure, with loop instructions acting as its core components. The proposed approach consists of two steps: (1) establishing the loop skeleton and (2) filling it with appropriate instructions. A software tool was also developed to automate the creation of program skeletons with various loop structures by defining loop parameters and using keyboard input to simulate rhythm patterns. Additionally, the software integrates piano sounds and delay procedures within loop instructions, functioning as an auditory representation of the loop skeleton. When loops appear in both branches of a selection, different instruments are used for parallel loops. This application enables a multi-sensory learning experience, allowing students to listen to the loop structure, visually track program execution, and perceive the rhythm of the algorithm.

Furthermore, the integration of dance into informatics education, specifically for teaching sorting algorithms, was explored. This approach incorporates multi-sensory elements such as dance, music, rhythm, and theatrical role-playing to create an immersive learning environment engaging visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile senses. Students with an interest in dance participated by representing numbers in a sequence, wearing corresponding labels on their attire. The accompanying music was inspired by Michael Flatley’s compositions, and appropriate dance steps for comparison and swapping operations were selected in consultation with a eurhythmics teacher. Recorded performances were later enhanced with graphical elements to illustrate the array structure and highlight the active dancer pairs.

The presented method and multimedia software-tool may improve informatics education and bring teachers/students closer to the concept that teaching/learning should be entirely practical, entirely pleasurable, and such as to make school a real game.

View full submission and measures of impact:

Embedded systems development in industry is mostly performed by interdisciplinary teams usually consisting of experts in the application domain, of control engineers, of hardware and software experts. The role of Computer Science graduates in such teams is rapidly shifting from merely an implementing activity to an integrating, often central systems engineering position with an emphasis on architecting, modeling and validation activities. To be successful, the graduates are increasingly expected to have a strong background in model-based, often rigorous design and analysis approaches, as well as being able to communicate efficiently with the domain, control engineering, and hardware experts.
To prepare for these demands, the Computer Science Department at RWTH Aachen University developed a tailored curriculum for embedded systems teaching. Its focus is to teach the different disciplines together with their interconnections from the first semester on. This way the students do not get a tunnel vision for each single discipline, but from an early stage on remain aware of the context, chances and boundaries of each single area. This approach reaches over both, the Bachelor and Master program in CS and consists of the three phases:

• The first phase provides the fundamentals of embedded computing which every CS student should know. It consists of the lecture Computer Engineering and a lab course in Systems Programming. Both courses are compulsory for CS Bachelor students.
• The second phase allows Master students interested in embedded systems to delve into selected embedded systems topics. 
• In the final phase, the students have the possibility to join interdisciplinary teams which take part in competitions organized by third parties.

View full submission and measures of impact:

The Danish Pervasive, Embedded, and Mobile Computing Curriculum consists of four main parts:

• a pervasive computing course that introduces graduate students to theoretical and technological aspects of pervasive, mobile, and embedded computing;
• a pervasive computing project where students identify and solve real-world problems using state-of-the-art pervasive computing technologies and concepts;
• a Master of Science (MSc) thesis program which allows students to pursue a specialization within pervasive computing for their graduation;
• a PhD program and course that introduces and guides PhD students within pervasive computing.

All teaching and curriculum material is widely available for public reuse, including course blogs, recommended reading lists, lectures, slides, lab classes, assignments, project proposals, former student projects for inspiration, videos, and pictures.

View full submission and measures of impact:

During 2000–2010, a course "Programming Techniques for Supercomputers" was developed to make students of computational sciences and engineering familiar with the concepts and dominant programming paradigms of high-performance computing (HPC). The teaching concept begins with a coverage of modern computer architecture, emphasizing performance-critical features like pipeline stalls, latency, bandwidth bottlenecks, interconnect topologies in shared and distributed memory parallel computers, and the properties of modern multicore processors. Students also learn basic scalability models, the dominant HPC programming paradigms (OpenMP, MPI), and hybrid MPI+OpenMP programming with attention to performance implications.

Starting from the lecture, the four following follow-up branches were developed: 

• Tutorials delivered at major conferences (e.g., SC10, ISC10), widely attended and well-received.
• A textbook (Introduction to High-Performance Computing for Scientists and Engineers, CRC Press), adopted in numerous courses and supported by online materials.
• Industry collaborations, expanding HPC training into new fields like medical applications and reactor physics, addressing a growing need for industry-specific HPC training.
• A spin-off company, Likwid High Performance Programming, provides HPC consulting, training, and services.

View full submission and measures of impact:

The shift to multi-core processors and their use in high-performance systems has created a need for widespread adoption of Parallelism and Concurrency (P&C). This poses a significant challenge for higher education to rapidly scale training in parallel computing. Guided by international recommendations (ACM/IEEE and UNESCO/IFIP), a comprehensive P&C curriculum was developed which promoted an integrated approach to P&C education across all levels of parallelism, combining foundational theory with modern technological advances. The curriculum was organized into thematic areas, further divided into modular units. Key areas included:

• Mathematical foundations of parallel computing.
• Parallel computing systems.
• Technologies of parallel programming (parallel software engineering foundations),
• Parallel methods and algorithms.
• Parallel computations, large-scale problems and problem-oriented applications.

View full submission and measures of impact: