Coding and AI teaching in Malaysian schools.
A months ago I posted out a survey for Malaysian STEM, math teachers and principals of they stand on how AI and coding is – or should be – taught in Malaysian schools. I conducted the survey on behalf of CodeSchool Finland.
CodeSchool Finland is the leading AI and coding curriculum and learning content developer. It was deeply involved in developing the coding as part of Finnish national curriculum launched in 2016. Currently it’s curriculum and learning content are being adopted in US, China and many other countries.
We also made a lucky draw for RM5,000 worth of AI module among respondents. Reward course is designed as extra curriculum, after school program, for ages 11-15 years. In the course students will learn everyday life AI. They will create a solution utilising machine vision, machine learning and probabilities. The lucky winner of this draw will be notified personally.
Results
Below are some key highlights of the survey results.
First let’s have a look to maybe the most fundamental question: Whats is important in teaching coding and AI? Very interesting founding was that the answers differ quite a lot between education authors and teachers. While teachers think the three most important topics are
- Learn commands and syntax by reading books or online
- Become technologically literate
- Learn to leverage coding and computational thinking skills in future life
The principals and education authorities selected these three topics the most important learning experiences
- Keep doing basic coding exercises in online environments
- Adopt principles on how coding works
- Experiment with various visual and textual programming languages
In questions regarding the learning materials answers were more in line between authorities and teachers:
Current status of PLB and digital materials
For questions regarding current implementation with related learning methods shows that among the respondents project based learning (PBL) is relative common but mostly used in English language learning.
Digital learning materials are mostly used in mathematics and English.
Both teachers and authorities consider digital format and support for PBL highly important. Also online support for teachers is valued.
Principals and authorities put more importance on the teachers professional development than the teachers themselves
Who responded to the survey?
71% respondents were from private schools. 67% were teachers and 33% principals or education authorities. Most teachers teach on secondary school
If you want to have more details of the survey or discuss how to integrate AI and coding in school’s curriculum or take it as after school program, don’t hesitate to contact me here on Linkedin.
Conclusions
Code School Finland’s learning solutions are digital and provide multiple hands-on projects for PBL experimentation and learning. The curriculum is modular and can be tailored to school’s situation and students learning objectives. Teacher training programs ensures development of teacher competencies and efficient roll-out of high-quality teaching.
