eTeacher: A Pilot in Flemish Secondary Education

Abstract

The Flemish Government has imposed a new and challenging set of learning objectives for secondary education. An important part comprises Computational Thinking for 3rd and 4th year students, and Computer Science for students in their 5th and 6th year. Yet, most teachers, who have mostly not been trained to teach these subjects, do not feel confident in programming-related topics. With eTeacher, we take away this burden from the teacher and allow students to work independently and at their own pace. In particular, we present a platform with an integrated course text for Computational Thinking. eTeacher is available on every device, gives automatic code-feedback both content-wise and on programming style and provides exercises of different types and levels. Teachers can monitor their students individually and consult statistics. The platform was extensively evaluated in a pilot at 20 schools.