Abstract:

In this paper, the most recent results of the ongoing European Tempus Project PROfessional network of Master’s degree in Informatics as a Second competence (PROMIS) are discussed. More specifically, we discuss the aspects of collective production of teaching materials.
The aim of the PROMIS project is to set up “Informatics as a Second Competence” (ISC) Master's degrees in 10 universities of 5 countries of Central Asia (CA: Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), with the support of 5 European Universities (Grenoble, FR, Berlin, DE, Kaunas, LT, Kuopio, FI, Lublin, PL).

The objective of the ISC master’s program is to provide specialists coming from non-IT disciplines with training enabling them to gain knowledge and master skills required (original by Agathe: master computer techniques and programming languages in order) to create, develop, manage and maintain new software tools for their specific domains. Therefore, the aim is not to prepare pure computer scientists, but rather versatile professionals able to combine already existing good knowledge in engineering, mathematics, physics, or even in economics, management, administration with competences in computer science, allowing them to implement tomorrow's software tools in a better way.

The key aspect of the project is to lay the foundations for the network of universities that would facilitate the mobility of students and teachers among all project partners, including the 5 European universities. High level of mobility requires easy adaptation in the host university. Students and teachers should find similar standards both in the level of the teaching, and in the approach adopted to deliver the teaching. To achieve this goal the project foresees the development of common pedagogical materials and the adoption of a common pedagogical approach for ten core courses of the master’s program. For a number of reasons that will be detailed in the full paper, it has been decided to implement as much as possible “reverse teaching” as a common pedagogical approach during the first two semesters of the master’s program.

The development of common reference pedagogical materials has been launched through five workshops, each of them hosted by a different European partner. About 25 teachers representing all the Central Asian universities and at least 3 European universities attended each workshop, working on two main courses of the master’s program, and producing common pedagogical materials in English and/or in Russian.

From the technical standpoint, the implementation evolves around the single Moodle platform where pedagogical content is uploaded for each course following a predefined structure and naming conventions. The full paper will describe the organization, the progression and the results of the workshops, discuss the limits of what has been achieved and the work that still remains to be done for the repository to be functional and alive.

Keywords:

Master studies, second competence, pedagogical collaboration, teaching material production, reverse teaching.