POSTECH has launched a new educational program for elementary and secondary school teachers to train them how to teach students on computational thinking and digital literacy through basic coding.

Starting this September, POSTECH will offer teachers open online courses and offline training on the campus to help them acquire a better understanding of computational thinking, or the thinking behind coding. The program is also to serve as a content warehouse platform for pedagogical resources and provide the teachers with creative contents they can utilize for class activities.

Computational thinking (CT), as described in Google for Education, “is a problem-solving process that includes some characteristics, such as logically ordering and analyzing data and creating solutions using a series of ordered steps (or algorithms), and dispositions, such as the ability to confidently deal with complexity and open-ended problems.” It is deemed as a defining feature of the future and an extremely important skill that the younger generation should be learning to succeed in a fast-changing landscape of today and tomorrow’s society.

In this backdrop, South Korea’s Ministry of Education has announced its plan to add coding to the compulsory educational curriculum effective in 2018 as part of a wider undertaking to prepare for the 4^th industrial revolution. The need for qualified teachers has never been greater. POSTECH’s Teach the Teachers initiative, developed in collaboration with the Yeosijae think tank, provincial governments and their offices of education, comes amid efforts to support the educational innovation as the nation’s flagship university.

In May 2017, POSTECH signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Chungnam Provincial Government and Chungnam Provincial Office of Education to facilitate the program. Gyeongsang Province is next in line for collaboration.  POSTECH plans to gradually extend the program nationwide.