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Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning
From refugee to programmer? A framework for a collaborative coding program for
higher education institutions
Daniela Wolf, Martin Ebner,
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Daniela Wolf, Martin Ebner, (2018) "From refugee to programmer? A framework for a collaborative
coding program for higher education institutions", Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching &
Learning, https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIT-09-2017-0024
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From refugee to programmer?
A framework for a collaborative
coding program for higher
education institutions
Daniela Wolf and Martin Ebner
Department of Educational Technology, Graz University of Technology,
Graz, Austria
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to share the lessons learned in teaching programming skills to
refugees during a time when circumstances were changing quickly and constantly and the needs of the target
group were not well known.
Design/methodology/approach –The integration of refugees poses serious challenges for the hosting
society’s education system. A large number of refugees can put a strain on all kinds of public resources, and
difficulties with differences in languages, previous curricula, falling behind due to having to spend time outside of
education, and psychological traumas have to be expected. In response to the refugee crisis and in order to
manage mass migration, the adaptive nature and rapid development of civic approaches can contribute to
overcoming some of these challenges. To evaluate the impact of civic approaches, the authors have paidattention
to refugees{code} an Austrian coding school for refugees which was developed by the civic community and
which shows great potential in terms of providing rapid, innovative and adaptive kinds of educational support
for refugees, as well as helping to combat the lack of programmers in the Austrian job market.
Findings –As the great potential that initiatives like refugees{code} have for education, there are also
substantial challenges. As we learned from the first course, course completion rates were very low. Therefore,
it is important to build an infrastructure and a learning environment around the course. This learning
environment includes providing mentoring and support, creating spaces where participants can learn. It was
also found that having a pedagogically trained staff who is sufficient in the English language, too, is
necessary to cater to a heterogeneous group. Also varying teaching strategies according to the needs and
skills of the learner is necessary. One of the issues that confronts projects like refugees{code} is also receiving
legal status. The collaboration with universities and colleges can be greatly helpful because they are already
familiar with the structure of public authorities as well as with heterogeneous groups. Initiatives like refugees
{code} are agile and flexible and know how to take advantage of that. The authors conclude that bringing
successful education to heterogeneous and culturally different groups is multi-faceted. It is not something any
individual organization or project can do; it can only be the result of a system of different actors working
together with traditional educational institutions.
Originality/value –This research study reports on two courses of programming for refugees and seeks to
offer practical advice for further research and for the implementation of such courses into the educational
system. Therefore a framework is proposed which should be taken into account in case of doing similar work.
Keywords Teaching, Programming, Integration, Europe, Austria, Refugees, Coding
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Beginning in 2015, hundreds of thousands of people sought refuge all over Europe, the
Middle East and North Africa, fleeing from war, poverty, violence and persecution.
This record-high displacement of people, dubbed the “refugee crisis,”did not just put
Journal of Research in Innovative
Teaching & Learning
Emerald Publishing Limited
2397-7604
DOI 10.1108/JRIT-09-2017-0024
Received 27 September 2017
Revised 27 September 2017
Accepted 9 May 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2397-7604.htm
© Daniela Wolf and Martin Ebner. Published in Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching &
Learning. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative
Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create
derivative works of this article ( for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full
attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://
creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Collaborative
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countries’social security systems to the test, but their educational systems as well. Of the
1.2m first-time asylum applications in Europe 2015, Austria, together with Germany,
Hungary and Sweden, received around two-thirds of the EU’s asylum applications and is
on the top recipients of asylum applications per capita[1]. Due to the scale of the human
tragedy, the high level of global awareness and the coverage by the media, a novel
and diverse constellation of people, especially from the civic community, responded
extraordinarily quickly to this crisis and supported refugees with many different
measures and means (Mason et al., 2017). Looking beyond providing basic services to
newcomers, questions of integration in the host society needed to be addressed. For this,
access to training and education proves to be one of the main factors in response to these
new challenges (Korac, 2003; Rooth, 1999; Stevenson and Willott, 2007). To mitigate the
risk of a parallel society, the Austrian government promoted language courses, and
ordered integration courses and competence checks (Gruber, 2017). While potential
stakeholders in the refugee crisis, traditional educational institutions like universities and
schools were not able to rise to the challenge nearly as quickly as self-organized
volunteers, groups and organizations. The lack of flexibility due to the complexity of
internal processes, the strict requirements and the lengthy internal decision-making
processes of said educational institutions made it difficult for them to act responsively to
the exceptional situation. In this context, civil society stepped in, organizing initiatives for
quick and direct integration of the newly arriving people, regardless of age, gender and
level of knowledge.
A subset of these initiatives included a substantial number of learning and training
programs, in search of meaning and denominator with the newcomers from classes of
cooking and knitting to ways to work with charitable organizations or formal vocational
training. With the question surfacing about what skills may be most valuable to newcomers,
technical skills seem to be the most future-proof as an important factor in work and
society. We therefore look into a computer science topic, namely programming. The civic
approaches of coding schools founded during the refugee crisis, namely an Austrian
initiative named refugees{code}, serves as our case study.
First, we will begin by characterizing coding initiatives in Middle Eastern, North African
and European countries, who play a particularly interesting role in the landscape of coding
for refugees. Second, we will discuss the background of our case refugees{code} and further
explain our research question and design. Third, we present a description of our
action-based research, outlining two different courses. Fourth, we give an overview of our
results and findings from our action-based research and discuss some challenges as well as
solutions and lessons learned common to educational projects for refugees. Finally, we
conclude and deliver a framework for educational institutions like universities and colleges
that would like to offer courses for refugees.
Overview about coding initiatives
One kind of initiative that emerged during the refugee crisis in 2015 were refugee coding
schools, which are training newcomers to code and thereby filling job market demands.
In Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, we have identified ten such initiatives
(see Figure 1). Since people are still fleeing, not only having to leave behind their homes, but
also their current plans for education, still more such projects seem to be forthcoming. As a
result, there are a growing number of coding schools not founded by public or educational
institutions. Rather, they are founded by a new breed of technology-savvy groups and
organizations consisting of people with varying, but often tech-based, backgrounds, an
affinity towards start-ups and a tendency to care about social issues (Mason et al., 2017).
They are often, either partly or entirely, driven by volunteers, and they aim to become social
enterprises which achieve sustainability through a business model rather than external
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funding (Mason et al., 2017). Although they share the same objectives as educational
institutions, their work is done by rapidly and iteratively testing ideas in a way that
traditional education institutions cannot because of limiting factors such as regulations,
internal processes or mere traditions.
The educational teams of these coding schools are characterized by their entrepreneurial
mindset. They demonstrate a high degree of flexibility and personal initiative and work
either unpaid or for nominal wages (Mason et al., 2017). As an example for such a civic
project, “Kiron Open Higher Education”was founded in September 2015 by a group of
students in Berlin. It aims to support refugees by giving them access to Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs), and at the same time fast-tracking their entry into the university
system. The idea is that after completing two years of study online, students can apply to
transfer to a partner university where some of these online courses count toward a fully
accredited bachelor’s degree.
An example of such a civic project which offers courses for refugees on software
development to subsequently find work in the IT sector is refugees{code} in Austria. It was
founded in the summer of 2016 by a group of people in Vienna. Refugees are offered the
opportunity to study during the time in which application for employment or a university
place are unlikely to be successful due to lack of proficiency in the local language. This is not
only an efficient use of their time but can give them focus and structure in a period of being
in a state of limbo. “At worst, one of our participants has to leave Austria. If that is the case,
then at least they will have learned something that they can use anywhere in the world,”
says refugees{code}-founder Stefan Steinberger. He got the idea for refugees{code} after
having a conversation with Dominik Beron from “refugeeswork.”Beron explained to him
that software developers were in high demand, and that many companies believed they
would find staff members through refugeeswork. This lead to refugees{code}, which
was founded by three co-founders, one of them who had already been doing volunteer work
with refugees.
“We had to choose between letting another semester go by while we were still fleshing out
the concept, or just going ahead and starting,”says Steinberger. It was decided to offer the
course as quickly as possible, to put together an ad-hoc course in a rather unusual situation.
“The University of Technology of Vienna had already been holding courses that were open to
refugees, and after talking with the initiators of these ‘Welcome.TU.code’-courses, we were
able to take over and hold one of those,”Steinberger noted[2]. Before founding refugees{code},
ReDI School
Techfugees
CodeDoor.Org Re:Coded Refugees Code Devugees Refugee Code Week Refugee On Rails CodeYourFuture
Hack Your Future
Figure 1.
The landscape of
coding initiatives for
refugees in the Middle
East, North Africa
and Europe
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none of the team members had any experience with implementing such a program. Even
though the University of Technology of Vienna already had been holding courses that were
open to refugees, they were facing the problem that they were not able to hold course
sequentially because the participants were just not attending. Therefore, cooperation with the
University of Technology of Vienna was established and a project plan was developed via a
few meetings and e-mails.
Research question
Institutions of higher education have an educational mandate when it comes to the future
of work and society. “Coding should be a requirement in every public school,”[3] said
Timothy D. Cook, the Chief Executive of Apple. On the other hand, Jane Margolis, Senior
Researcher at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University
of California points out that “it gets very problematic when industry is deciding the
content and direction of public education”[3]. Teaching coding courses has to become an
integral part of the educational offer in higher education institutions, but we share the
opinion of Angela Hemingway, executive director of the Idaho STEM Action Center,
in that industry, education initiatives and higher education institutions shall be
“collaborative partners”[3].
We must survey the properties required to effectively and efficiently conduct coding
courses aimed at heterogeneous and culturally diverse groups like refugees to be developed
and held by institutions of higher education. Initiatives founded by the civic society during
the refugee crisis might be able to point the way. Therefore, this research work focuses on
the following research question:
RQ1. What are the design parameters of a framework for institutions of higher education
in order to develop coding courses appropriate for the needs of heterogeneous and
culturally diverse groups?
This research work defines a framework with the most decisive and determining factors of
implementing coding lessons for cultural diverse groups at traditional institutions like
universities and colleges.
Research design
In the run-up to the first course, we developed a short questionnaire for the applicants.
Based on the results, the decision was made to build our research and the course
environment through a collaborative approach. Due to the urgency of the situation, the
rapid kick-off date of the pilot program, and the large uncertainty about the target group
and effective approaches, we needed to research and develop the program at the same time.
In such a context, a participatory method is most suitable, by collaborating with the target
group and feeding results of the research directly back into practical application. Especially
the empirical technique called “action research (AR).”This method is described as
participative, cyclic research approach directed towards both research and action
(Lewin, 1946). It was found to be the appropriate method for this case because it addresses
practical problems in a positive way by feeding results of the research directly back into
practical application. This approach allows for the creation of knowledge by means of
directly experienced innovation by developing strategies for achieving an improvement in a
particular situation. For the development of this program, the formulation of critical
hypotheses for each course cycle was essential and allowed us to research the fundamental
success factors, while still allowing for practical implementation and responsiveness to
our participants.
AR thereby addresses the problem of division between theory and practice by integrating
the development of practical application with research knowledge in a cyclical process
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(Somekh and Zeichner, 2009; Popplewell and Hayman, 2012; Rose et al., 2014). We worked with
constant evaluation cycles and used feedback for maintaining the current course and for
designing the next course cycle. The model used in this research is outlined in Figure 2.
During the planning phase, relevant issues with the current situation were identified and
ideas for improvement were developed. Interventions were discussed and planned in
advance of the action phase. During the activity phase, interventions were carried out.
Efforts in the intervention were documented, and data were collected (observation notes,
surveys, reflections, interviews, etc.) and analyzed.
A thorough review of a given situation along with past actions can enable a new
implementation cycle to improve the process. The end of one AR project may lead to
research on other situations, which enables new research and implementation cycles to
continue (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003).
In terms of our research work, we applied the principles of AR as follows: through our
selection process, we collected data on demographic factors, expectations and past
experiences. Then in the middle and at the end of each course, the participants were
surveyed twice; and the student teachers were interviewed once, at the end of each course.
The participants were closely observed over the entirely course, with the findings being
discussed and documented in the refugees{code}-teams weekly “jour fixe.”These data were
collected and analyzed within 2–3 weeks after the course ended, in order to contrive
interventions and improvements for the next cycle.
We strongly benefited from the flexibility in this approach, described by Dick (2002) as a
main advantage of AR. He states that the research can start with quite imprecise research
questions. The cyclic structure allows refinements of the research design during the
research process, as deeper insights into the situation are gained. When moving forward,
each cycle is required to become more precise. One of the distinctive features of AR is the
participatory nature of the research. This requires that practitioners are participants in the
sense of being partners in the research (Denscombe, 2014). One guiding factor in our
research was the clarity about our end-goal: integration through coding, and this high
Identification/
Redefinition
of the initial
research
problem
Critical
Reflection
Analysis of
data
Taking
Action
Observation
Sources: Adapted from van Akker (1999) and Rose
et al. (2014)
Figure 2.
Phase of an AR cycle
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standard of professional development functioned as orientation for our research
approach. Furthermore, the level of pre-knowledge of our participants was not known
and past experiences were not available which led to appreciation for the flexibility in
the AR approach.
Research study
Course 1
The first course took place between September 2016 and January 2017.
After the kick-off event (see Figure 3) with the refugees{code}-team the participants who
passed the application phase got introduced with the refugees{code}-team as well as the
time table and the structure of the course.
Course 1 started with 21 male and one female refugees from five different nationalities
(Syria, Iran, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh), all born between 1971 and 2001. Participation
was not bound to a legal prerequisite like the person’s asylum status. The only requirements
for participants were being proficient in the English language, being motivated to learn how
to code and having the time to attend.
In order to verify these requirements, the applicants were asked to write a short letter of
motivation, a maximum of 150 words, as well as to take a short test consisting of eight
logical tasks like completing sequences of numbers and letters.
The course focused on coding in Java[4]. All lessons were held in English as traditional
“face-to-face”classes. Each week three 2 h-long lessons took place at the computer labs of
University of Technology of Vienna.
Each lesson consisted of a lecture and an exercise. These usually alternated between teaching
new content first and then letting participants implement it. At the beginning of each lesson,
there were short recaps which included the most important questions from the last sessions.
As the course was only 6 h in total per week, participants were told that it would be
crucial for them to learn and code at home. Since not all of the refugees had access to a
computer at home.
All teachers were computer science students themselves, who were awarded three ECTS
for their efforts. A course of this kind serves as an invaluable lesson for pre-graduate
academics, since it allows them to experience standing in front of an auditorium, thereby
getting an inside into teaching, and on top of that, being able to put their acquired knowledge
Research Study
Kick-off C1
Start C1
2016 2017
September October November December
Course 1:
face-to-face JAVA classes Course 2: JAVA
Course 2: C
(based on CS50x)
24 h
Hacka-
thon
Open Coding
Sessions
Application
for C2
Application for C1
Questionnaire for C2
Survey
Results
Survey
November, 2016
May, 2017
Results
January
January 25
Start
Mentorship
Open Coding
Day
October 13
October 17
End C1
Closing
Event
January 20
Start C2
March 13
June 26
July 15–
July 16
Telephone Interviews
Survey
Observations
Telephone Interviews
Mentoring
Observations
Survey
February 3– February 26
December 23– January 22 January 27– February 4
End C2
CE
June 22
Kick-off C2
February 3
November 7 November 21
Intercultural
Awareness Workshop
December 3
Leading Self
Workshop
Life of a Programmer Workshop
March 25
LSW
April 8
May 19 May 30 June 20
Figure 3.
Time table of the first
and second course –
the research study
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into action, and maybe even to the test. As a result, the concept of “learning through teaching”
(e.g. Martin 1985, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2002) is being automatically applied as well.
After the first four weeks, a significant decrease in attendance was noticeable. Therefore, as
a countermeasure, a mentoring program was introduced on November 7, 2016 (see Figure 3) in
order to enable taking care of individuals’needs andproviding care outside the classroom. As a
consequence, the participants were separated into five small groups of four to five people and
each of them was provided with a mentor from the refugees({code}-team. The task of the team
members was to support the participants on a personal level and to serve as a dialog partner
for their worries and problems.
Besides the physical course and the mentoring program, virtual spaces in the form of
Facebook, Slack[5] and WhatsApp groups were also opened. These allowed the organization
and the teachers to share information with the participants and also offered participants
channels to ask questions and get them answered.
In addition, a so-called “Open Coding Day”was held (see Figure 3). This was meant to be
early conceptual test for a potential second course. Since the thinking behind the concept
was rather complex and ultimately based on flawed assumptions, we deem this beyond the
scope of this research work and are therefore omit it.
Another special event named “Intercultural Awareness Workshop”was held on
December 3 (see Figure 3). The intention behind this event was to facilitate better
understanding between the participants from different cultural backgrounds and to allow
the participants to reflect on their home and their new environment.
The course ended with a closing event on January 25, 2017 (see Figure 3), at which
participants were awarded their certificates.
Course 2
The second course took place between March 2017 and June 2017. It began with 38 male and
two female refugees from ten different nationalities between the ages of 19 and 35.
The application period for Course 2 was opened from December 23, 2016 to January 22,
2017 and involved filling out an online application form. Due to the high number of
applications, an e-mail was sent to all applicants asking them to fill out an online
questionnaire between January 27 and February 4, 2017 (see Figure 3). Further, all
applicants were invited to an “info session”by e-mail (see Figure 3), which was ultimately a
pre-course Q&A session by the refugees{code}-team for the participants. The applicants’
levels of prior knowledge in Course 1 differed widely and the time to evaluate them was very
limited as well. Therefore, the applicants were required to attend at least three out for four
“Open Coding Sessions”at University of Technology of Vienna (see Figure 3). The
“Introduction to Computer Science”-MOOC CS50x from Harvard University was used which
allowed applicants to demonstrate their level of prior knowledge and ability to comprehend
the elementary concepts of coding. Another reason why this measure was employed was the
high rate of drop-outs during the first course. Since taking these “Open Coding Sessions”
took the participants some time and effort, it also served as a tool to measure the applicants’
motivation as well.
Differing from the first course, the participants were divided into two groups, “Java”
and “C.”ItwasintendedthattheJAVAgroupgetsface-to-facelecturesheldbythe
students’teachers(likeinCourse1).Sincetwoofthefourstudent-teachershadrather
limited English proficiency, that concept was discarded and replaced by a MOOC, namely
the JAVA-MOOC by Udacity. However, after the participation in this MOOC turned out to
be very low, the decision was made to switch back to face-to-face lectures held by the
student-teachers. The “Ccourse”was held as planned, using the Introduction to Computer
Science-MOOC CS50x from Harvard University. Its goal and structure was set
ambitiously to finish with this intensive 12 week course, which taught C, Python and
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JavaScript with nine problem sets. In the second course, refugees{code} reduced the
contact to two weekly sessions of three hours, because the feedback from both sides was
that communication was difficult between the three different teacher groups. All teachers
were again computer science students themselves, who were awarded 3 ECTS for their
efforts (see Course 1).
As in Course 1, virtual spaces in the form of Facebook, Slack and WhatsApp groups
were opened. In addition, an e-learning platform based on Moodle was introduced as a
measure of support for the “CS50x”group of the second course (Figure 4).
As part of the special events, a workshop on the topic “Leading Self”was held
(see Figure 3). The workshop covered topics like “How strength-based leadership and
positivity can lead to higher performance and happiness at work.”The workshop was held
on two separate dates in order to keep group sizes small, with half of the class participating
on March, 25 and the other half on April 8.
Just like the first course, the second course ended with a closing event on June 22, at
which 23 participants (21 men and 2 women) were awarded their certificates.
In addition, a 24-hour Hackathon was held (see Figure 3). This was meant to be a social
event where the participants from Courses 1 and 2 could come together to prepare
participants for solving real life problems they were interested in. Since the Hackathon was
not a fixed component of the course at the beginning and therefore not systematically
surveyed, we will not give further explanation on it in this paper.
Research results
The following section presents the results and findings of the surveys. The subjective data
(learners’perspectives), experiences from the refugees{code} team taken from their
protocols of their “jour fix”meetings, as well as experiences and opinions from the student
teachers are presented.
Course 1
Learners’perspectives. A total of six learners were interviewed (telephone interviews, see
Figure 3) and asked for the following factors.
Motivation. Asked what they wanted to achieve by attending the course, all expressed
slight variations on learning enough coding to be able to get a job or making enough
progress to enroll at university:
I want to make my chances bigger to find a good job here in Austria.
I want to learn coding because I need to improve my skills and increase my chances on the job market.
I’m interested in participating in this course because it will help me to improve my programming
qualifications and therefore be valuable in finding a job as well.
What courses look like
Participants TU Sessions
Go to moodle.refugeescode.at and complete the
tasks.
Review Lecture
Q&A Sessions
Help with the implementation of the pset
Correct psets of participants
Watch Lecture
Answer Questions
Give Feedback to r{c}
Begin implementing the Pset of that week.
•
•
•
Figure 4.
Lesson plan of the
second course
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In Syria, I was studying computer science at Damascus university, but because of the war, I had to
interrupt my studies at the beginning of my second year. But when I arrived in Austria, I was
hoping to complete my studies here and I think this is the best opportunity to do just that.
General impressions of the course. The interviewees were asked about their opinions on the
course that they attended. The responses were positive, with specific mentions of their
teachers and colleagues, being able to practice their coding skills and the personal support
they have received from the refugees{code} team. One person noted that he liked the
positive environment. Another one mentioned the positive value of having the WhatsApp
group to receive immediate answers to their questions.
Suggestions. Asked about whether there were any aspects of the course they did not like or
would like to change, only a few identified any issues. These criticisms included the inclusion of
too many student teachers in class, speaking at the same time during the lesson (the noise was
too loud). Two of them also noted that the lectures were inconsistent and not well-organized.
Attendance. After the first four weeks, a significant decrease in attendance was
noticeable. Therefore, the six participants who did not attend anymore were called via
phone. The following points are the answers given by these participants:
•Conflicting schedule with German courses, temporary just-for-money-job or
requirements by the AMS (meaning the “Austrian Job-Market Agency,”
among other things also the agency in charge of paying out all different kinds of
welfare money).
•False expectations about the content of the course, the course’s teaching speed or the
prior knowledge.
•Realization that learning German is more important.
•Change in housing condition (relocation).
•Found a worthwhile job during the time of the course. This answer was given by
two participants –one stated to have found work in IT-network engineering, one in
IT-maintenance/-operations.
•Higher interest in networking and web development technologies.
Homework, practicing and feedback. They interviewees were also asked what they found to
be their greatest challenge(s) as learners. Most of them were not able to articulate specific
challenges or said that they had no problems. The challenges mentioned related to the
learning process: being unable to do the homework assignments. Other challenges related to
wider issues: lack of time to practice, lack of access to the teachers, and teaching personnel
changing repeatedly.
Learning support. Finally, they were asked what best helps them with learning. The
response to this question was:
•practicing outside class;
•constant practice;
•the support from other learners and tutors; and
•receiving immediate feedback identifying errors.
Refugees{code}’s perspectives. Volunteering and lack of experience by the student teachers.
The refugees{code} team states that there was a lot of fluctuation in the lessons, in the sense
that the turnover rate of teachers was high, and some of them did not stay long.
The teachers were students who had never taught before, and it showed in the way they
went about holding class. Classes were mostly self-organized and chaotic.
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The lack of experience by the student teachers initially created a certain amount of
frustration among the refugees{code} team, though, according to them, this quickly turned
into a motivational factor to employ the MOOC to get better results.
Mentoring. According to the refugees{code} team, their efforts to accommodate the
needs of the specific individuals were not sufficient. A tendency to treat the participants as a
homogenous mass rather than individuals seemed to have gotten in the way.
Locals. Another thing which became clear during the first course was that there is little
interaction between the Austrian and refugees’communities. This calls for an investigation
into ways and means to increase this interaction, which is crucial for integration efforts of all
kinds. Therefore, locals should be brought into the groups in order for the refugees to be
able to gain experience in working with and alongside people from an entirely different
cultural background –an experience they would otherwise very likely lack until actually
joining the workforce of a company. Another assumption is, that having native speakers of
the language the course is being held in might benefit the refugees, as the native speakers
are likely use more expressions and terms commonly used in the industry, which might
increase their usage among the refugees as well.
Student teachers’perspectives. The student teachers were asked about their opinion on
how to improve the course they were teaching.
Preparation. The student teachers stated that especially, the first few sessions need
careful and time-consuming preparation in order to, on the one hand, convey the concepts
and ways of thinking of coding to a target group with little to no prior exposure to these,
and, on the other hand, to scare off as few participants as possible with the subject matter.
Responsibilities. According to the student teachers, responsibilities should be agreed
upon and divided up clearly. Employing teams of two for each of the sessions, who are then
responsible for everything concerning that session (preparation, executing and follow-up)
has proven feasible.
Content. Initially, a rough timetable for the semester containing the learning content has
to be prepared. Even small chunks of the content should be accompanied by examples for
practice. In addition, presentation slides and other course materials must to be able to serve
as reference materials for homework assignments. Therefore, these materials need to be
structured accordingly.
Homework and practicing. The student teachers stated that homework assignments
should be given out regularly and subsequently reviewed, preferably with every session.
This serves as feedback for both the course teams as well as the students. Useful examples
are imperative, whether on the presentation slides, other course materials or with homework
assignments. Since coming up with such examples is usually very difficult, using
preexisting examples whenever possible is to be preferred. Coding examples should be
tested by another teacher first before being tested in the field.
Storage. According to the student teachers, a centralized repository for storing all the
course materials and homework assignments is crucial.
Addressing the group. When asked about addressing the group, the student teachers
suggested when naming resources, for instance, a github-page, a URL shortener, a Moodle
course, etc., the use of the term “refugee”should be avoided. They stated that people taking
part in the courses are there as participants first, not refugees, and that is how they should
be met and addressed.
Communication and feedback. The student teachers said that being able to communicate
with the group as well as an anonymous channel for the group to give feedback is vital and
should be available right from the start. For communication between student teachers,
“Slack”has proved a viable option. In addition, monthly jour fixes are advisable, which
allows the teachers of all groups to exchange views and opinions. After each session,
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teachers should give each other feedback about the sessions held (what was taught, what
was expected, which expectations were and were not met, what course materials should be
repeated, etc.), so that they are in turn able to better prepare themselves.
Course 2
Learners’perspectives. Attendance. The development in terms of the number of participants
from the second course shows, that despite the “Open Coding Sessions,”the first few weeks
still proved to be a significant hurdle for the participants (see Figure 5).
Figure 5 shows the attendance of the participants at the specific dates, whereas “1”
marks attendance and “0”stands for absence. If the bar of one particular participant ends at
5, that means that they dropped out of the course at this point. For example, Participant 38
attended the first four sessions, was absent at the next one, came back again the next week
and then dropped out entirely. In total, 23 participants completed the entire course, with 14
of them completing the JAVA course (participants 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18 and
19) and 9 of them completing the “C”course, based on “CS50”(participants 22, 24, 25, 26, 27,
29, 30, 31 and 32) (Figure 4).
After reviewing all 17 drop-out cases, it was clear that 10 of them had dropped out after
the first few weeks. The reasons participants gave for dropping out from course two are
as follows:
•personal reasons;
•too much time requirement (20 h);
•attending course in different town or living in another state;
•too occupied with other things (job, pet, child, etc.);
Attendance and Drop-outs
Participant 40 11110
Participant 39 1
Participant 38 1
Participant 37 100
Participant 36 10
Participant 35 1
Participant 34 1
Participant 33 1
Participant 32 11111111111111110
Participant 31 11111111110
Participant 30 11111111111111 1110000
00000
0
Participant 29 111111111111100100
Participant 28 111
Participant 27 11
Participant 26 11
Participant 25 1111111
Participant 24 11111
Participant 23
Participant 22
Participant 21
Participant 20
1
11111
111
111
Participant 19 111111111111100001
Participant 18 11111111111111110001
Participant 17 111111111111111111101
Participant 16 11111000
Participant 15 1111000
Participant 14 1111
Participant 13 1111
Participant 12 111111111
Participant 11 1111111111111111
Participant 10 1111111
Participant 9 101 1 1 1 1
Participant 8 10 001
Participant 7 111111
Participant 6 100111
Participant 5 11111
Participant 4 111111
11111
11110
1111111100
1 11111111111001
111111110001111
1111
111000111111
10 011111111111
11110
110 001111111
11111
11111111111100111
1000
Participant 1
March 13, 2017 March 16, 2017 March 20, 2017 March 23, 2017 March 27, 2017 March 30, 2017 April 03, 2017 April 06, 2017 April 24, 2017 May 04, 2017 May 08, 2017
May 11, 2017 May 15, 2017 May 18, 2017 May 22, 2017 May 29, 2017 June 01, 2017 June 09, 2017 June 12, 2017 June 19, 2017 June 23, 2017
111111111111000001
0 5 10 15 20 25
Participant 2 111101110 0001111111
Participant 3 111111111111111111111
11
1111
1111
11
110
00
1111111110
1111
11
11
111111000
11111111111000
00111111110110 0
11
01 1 1
11
111
111111
11
111 110111
0000
00000
00 00
11111100
111100
111111111000
111100
1100
0
Figure 5.
Attendance and
drop-outs
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•school;
•relocating;
•German course;
•realized that coding is not his/her thing;
•sickness;
•got an internship;
•course was too difficult; and
•not interested anymore.
E-learning platform. As a measure of support for the “CS50x”group of the second course,
the MOOC materials were hosted in an e-learning platform based on Moodle (Figure 6).
Initially, only a small minority of refugees used the e-learning platform. The reasons for
this were not systemically surveyed, but it was assumed that many refugees struggled to
understand e-learning platforms and had difficulties navigating them. Accordingly, giving
better instructions in the beginning of the course could be decisive. As a measure to draw
more participants to the platform, a weekly newsletter was set up.
Communication and Information flow. It was also noticed that the WhatsApp group they
introduced was primarily being used as a questioning service, much more than the
Facebook group or the forum on the e-learning platform:
I really like that in the Whatsapp group, I have the opportunity to ask questions and receive
answers immediately.
This could be connected to a broader point about information-seeking behavior shown by
refugees. Refugees are generally skeptical of information on the internet and would not use
it for information seeking. Evidently, smartphones are not regarded as a device that serves
as an information portal which one can independently search for information and resources
from an external resource with (Mason et al., 2017). They prefer direct interaction.
Rather, the information flows are predominantly peer-to-peer. If people need to know
something, they will most readily seek answers from within their social network rather
than, for instance, utilizing a search engine to find an answer (Mason et al., 2017). It is
Figure 6.
Structure in Moodle
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likely that this is –at least in part –a matter of trust: for people who have lived in
situations where media reports are being distorted by partisan propaganda, mistrusting
authorities and preferring personal corroboration may well be a sound strategy (Mason
et al., 2017).
Language. Language skills and therefore communication overall proved to be
problematic on both the teachers’and the refugees’sides. While the student teachers
were prone to having difficulties teaching in and communicating complex ideas in English,
refugees often spoke more than two or even three languages, but at a somewhat lower level
of skill, more superficially (Figure 7).
Women. Since reaching female refugees proved to be very difficult, the women
attendance was very low (Figure 8).
This might be because in some of the refugee’s cultures, women are more likely to be seen to
be more responsible for childcare and housekeeping than for taking part in the workforce
and earning a living.
Refugees{code}’s perspectives. Application, language and hardware. While the first
course received just a few applicants, the second course counted 135 total applications. With
such a large demand for a limited number of spaces, there was a need for a fair and effective
selection procedure. Through a focus on competences, the refugees{code}-team structured
personal questions, small tasks and some assignments in a form for all applicants. Besides
asking for personal information (name, date of birth, nationality, etc.), the applicants were
Which languages do you speak?
English
German
Arabic
Tur k i s h
Persish
Urdu
Hindi
Farsi
Punjabi
Chinese
Pashtu
French
30
30
22
7
7
3
3
1111
2
2
2
Figure 7.
Language skills of
participants
Gender
Female
37
3
Male
Figure 8.
Gender distribution in
the second course
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also questioned as to their expectations for the course, their level of skill in the
English language, prior knowledge in programming and their motivation for learning how
to code as well.
Additionally, a questionnaire was used to answer whether the participants owned a
laptop, whether they were able to attend all or just some of the sessions during the
observational phase, their legal status, whether they were currently attending a language
course, and what their favorite special subject (web development, mobile development,
enterprise software development, etc.) was.
While smartphone ownership is widespread and e-mail was a widely used technology –all
participants from course two had an e-mail address and were using it. Ownership of hardware
–PCs, laptops, etc. –was widespread in the second course as well, especially among Syrians it
was next to universal. Among refugees from less prosperous nations like Afghanistan, not
everybody had a laptop.
Since being able to use pre-existing resources was an important part of the program,
English sufficiency was crucial, so the questionnaire also contained a link to an online
video in English which applicants were asked to watch and answer questions about, in
order to find out whether the applicants were able to understand and grasp the video’s
English-language content. The refugees{code}-team assumed that English levels would be
high enough, or at least participants would learn better English for the programmer context.
Especially because almost all programming resources online are written in English.
In order to be approved for course participation, applicants had to finish at least three out
of four of the “open coding sessions.”Besides attendance, progression of the CS50x’s
“problem sets”–the course’s term for practical exercises –was also taken into account. This
became a problem in and of itself, as some applicants believed course progression (the
number of “problem sets”completed) to be more important than the actual quality of the
code. It has to be noted that communicating the intentions and goals of such a measure is
vital for its success. Also, differently weighting is advisable, for instance, ranking the
applicants attending the sessions in person higher, since the data have shown that they are
less likely to drop out of the course.
Building a relationship with teachers. Another hypothesis that building a relationship
with teachers was important, something we tested by having two instructor groups instead
of three.
(Learning) Support. Dropout reasons were similar to the first course. However, one
participant found the progress to low and quit because of that. Therefore, the refugees
{code}-team recommended to encourage the more advanced to support the slower ones and
thereby practice the skill of explaining: a useful skill for senior developers.
Teaching method and strategy. The refugees{code} team came also to the conclusion
that the refugees’needs were different and that the “teacher-in-front”approach was not
effective. To integrate the experience and knowledge gained from the first course, the
teaching method was redesigned from scratch. The role of the student teachers shifted from
being a mere lecturer to being a supportive and encouraging tutor who motivates the
participants to explore and experiment. This allowed participants to take charge of their
learning process themselves. As a result, the student teachers were able to spend more time
on giving one-on-one support to the participants. To better respond to the needs of the
participants and to support their development, refugees{code} provided student teachers
with relevant background information like their home country, hobbies, expectations and
work experience on the participants.
Communication and information flow. The team of refugees{code} seemed to have given
more thought to how to reach their target group, having concluded that the prospects of
reaching them digitally (or that they will find the site of their own accord)
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were poor. One part of this outreach strategy has been through word of mouth, because
refugees{code} recognized that the information flow between refugees is predominantly
peer-to-peer. The refugees{code}-team also noticed that the WhatsApp group they
introduced was primarily being used as a questioning service much more than the Facebook
group or the forum on the e-learning platform.
Financing. During both courses refugees{code} was without any budget, spending
EURO 50 on a webhost for the website, and many hours observing, interpreting and
experimenting. What allowed refugees{code} to act on high quality but a low budget, and
was also the use of open source technology, like Open Educational Resources (OER), Server
technologies, RaspberryPi’s and frameworks and libraries. Laptops for participants were
donated from companies.
Levels. When evaluating the levels, the “C”group with only the online course had
progressed further than the other group. This could be due to the ambitious but clear time-
line, the quality of the online course and the structured learning platform that was available.
One participant with previous experience found a job as a developer, and a “Java”
participant started an internship at a university supporting the mechatronics department
with his newly gained skillset.
Student teachers’perspectives. The student teachers were asked about their opinion on
how to improve the course.
Responsibilities. The student teachers noted that they would have wished for better
distribution of tasks (which tasks they were responsible for, who to ask in case of
uncertainties, etc.), and a more planned out schedule.
Preparation. The student teachers said that the participants often asked for more in-
depth explanations for the “problem sets”and stated that they did not fully understand the
exercises. They stated that the number of questions raised by the participants increased
with the level of difficulty of the “problem sets.”Preparing for these questions in advance
proved to be effective.
Level of knowledge. Because the number of participants was initially very high, evaluating
the level of knowledge for each of the participants was very difficult, especially since the
information (grading of the “problem sets,”personal impressions of the supervisors, etc.) was
distributed and not yet collected or, in some case, not even recorded at all. The student
teachers proposed the idea to assign a number of specific participants to each of them, so that
they could monitor the participants more effectively. As proposed, this would not only make
their job easier, but also would allow them to focus in more on specific people with specific
problems, therefore according for the participants’differing levels of knowledge.
Support. The student teachers stated that the one-on-one support for the “problem sets”
was of great importance, however, it is also very important to keep in mind not to spend all
the available time on a single participant and to make a conscious effort to go from person to
person. They also said that the participants have questions but do not pose them actively,
especially not If the teacher is busy explaining something to somebody else at that moment.
If the same question is posed by more than one person, answering the question “publically”
on a flipchart or whiteboard and to employ other participants would know the answer might
be didactically valuable as well as a time-saver.
Grading. According to the student teachers the spreadsheets for the grading of the
problem sets were very useful. Two of the student teachers noted that the criteria for
grading should have been determined from the beginning and communicated to the
participants.
Another student teacher noted that the submitted code should be graded by at least two
teachers independently in order to see if the grades would lead to (roughly) the same results,
and to come to a consistent system of evaluation.
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Plagiarism. During the course, multiple cases of plagiarism were noticed by the student
teachers. In this case, meant that some participants had copy/pasted solutions they found on
github. With MOOCs like CS50x, this is problematic, since there are a great many solutions
for its exercises to found on the internet.
Discussion
“Refugees{code}”is a good example for an innovative, agile and adaptable learning
approach, as well as an example for developing and deploying a programming course with
next to no resources. It opens up prospects of finding work for the students, and it can aid
the Austrian job market and thereby the growth of Austria’s IT-industry.
As the results show the informal organizational structure is coupled with a strong
learning culture, where experimentation is encouraged and failure de-stigmatized. This
allows an iterative and adaptive project design according to user-centered principles with a
high degree of networking and exchange.
With the field of public education and its old structures being arguably overloaded, the
doors for innovators and reformers are wide open. As “Refugee Code”shows, civic
approaches can bring benefits like innovation, expertise and energy to educational
institutions. It can serve to counteract excessive bureaucracy, lack of transparency and poor
coordination of public education institutions.
But cooperating with established actors can also be beneficial for the new players: the
organization’s stable and proven structures can help them gathering on-the-ground
experience, reach the target group and to sustain and scale the project. Therefore, a
collaboration between both parties is mutually beneficial, not only in term of education, but
economically as well.
Proposed framework
After two courses the research outcome can be seen as a framework of crucial factors, which
should be taken into account in case of teaching programming to such a heterogeneous
group (Figure 9). Afterwards each single factor will be described in more detail.
Topic 1: organizational. Piloting and preparation. Since such a course concept (as seen in
course 1) rarely works on the “first strike,”the possibility to test concepts within the limits
of a pilot phase and with members of the target audience is vital. Besides the sessions
need careful and time-consuming preparation in order to, on the one hand, convey the
conceptsandwaysofthinkingofcodingtoatargetgroupwithlittletonopriorexposure
Organizational
• Piloting and Preparation
• Application
• Pedagogical staff
• Volunteers
• Language
• Support
• Responsibilities
Didactical
• Motivation
• Meeting the Needs
• Teaching Method and
Strategy
• Content
• Use of existing
educational resources
• Homework, Practicing
and Feedback
• E-Learning
• Communication and
Information flow
Participation
• Locals
• Women
• Companies
• Multipliers
Technical
• Provide hardware
• Storage
• E-Learning Platform
Financial
• Accreditation and
Grading
• Course Fee
• Financing
Figure 9.
Proposed framework
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to these, and, on the other hand, to scare off as little participants with the subject matter
as possible.
Application. Going through an extensive application process (as seen in course 2) serves
as a strong motivator for participants to stay the course and attend even in the face of
adversity, since if they are being challenged in advance of the course, they feel like the
earned their seat at the table.
Pedagogical staff. Although the “learning-by-teaching”approach as in the two courses is
immensely interesting to people in the field of education, it may be worthwhile to explore the
extend of its utility. While the student teachers were able to help by plugging the holes torn
open by the crisis situation, ultimately, they could complement the existing structures, but
not replace them. Therefore, a pedagogically trained staff who is sufficient in the English
language, too, is necessary to cater to a heterogeneous group. While the approach of
“learning-by-teaching”is interesting and educational for the student teachers, they also need
to be supported by pedagogically trained personnel. A possible solution might be a two-step
support concept:
The lion’s share of the mentoring work is being done by the student teachers.
The pedagogically trained personnel act additionally, but is responsible for the
content and quality of the courses, answers those questions that the student teachers cannot
and intervenes.
Volunteers. Although volunteering played an integral role in the two courses, we would
recommend to carefully selected volunteers.
Language. Language skills and communication proved to be problematic on both the
teachers’and refugees’sides. While the student teachers were prone to having difficulties
teaching and communicating complex ideas in English, refugees often spoke more than two
or even three languages. The refugees{code} team spoke also from obvious difficulties of
working with groups of heterogeneous learners with multiple languages.
Support. As seen in the two courses refugees need more support and mentoring, especially
emotional. We recommend creating and sustain a supportive learning environment where
motivating, consistent and service-oriented supervision is covered. Further we recommend to
encourage the more advanced to support the slower ones, and thereby practice the skill of
explaining.
Responsibilities. Responsibilities should be agreed upon and divided up clearly.
Employing teams of two for each of the sessions, who are then responsible for everything
concerning that session (preparation, executing and follow-up) has proven feasible. We also
recommend a distribution of tasks (which tasks they were responsible for, who to ask in
case of uncertainties, etc.), and a planned out schedule.
Topic 2: didactical. Motivation. As seen in the first course the refugees wish not just to
participate in a bit by bit integration measure, but to be able to see a complete pathway
toward successful integration and a better life.
Meeting the needs. Understanding the learners’situations fully is crucial, therefore, we
argue for the importance of co-creation and user-centric design meaning talking to learners
before and during any attempt to make a course for them. Especially for such a
heterogeneous learning group, there is no substitute for talking with them, listening to them,
and incorporating them as actively and as centrally as possible into the project design and
implementation. We would recommend making courses more responsive and adaptive to
meet future challenges effectively. These are points on which traditional institutions can
learn from our two courses.
Teaching method and strategy. For this teaching approach especially, the modules
must be connected by a common thread, and the questions must be practically oriented.
It would be detrimental to the success of a program to start with the assumption that the
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coding skills of the participants are high to begin with and then will only continue to rise.
While improvements in programming did not always come readily or quickly with the
refugees, we recognized that the refugees were keen to apply their new skills in situations
outside the classroom, e.g. hackathons. We also conclude that the teaching of refugees
would work better if teachers are provided with relevant background information on the
participants. There has also been criticism of the teaching skills of some of our student
teachers with rather limited English skills (see Pedagogical staff). We recommend greater
professionalism.
Content. Programs of this kind force universities and colleges to continually evaluate the
relevancy of their teaching content. Exercises and case studies have to have a tangible
connection to practical use for refugees to accept them. In order to achieve this, universities
and colleges have to work closely together with the course’s participants. At this point
though, the exact contribution that the different parties have to make is unclear and needs
further examination. We also recommend to set the content of the course so that it is
possible to follow suggestions from the learners themselves and from current issues and
needs arising from the learners.
Use of existing educational resources. As anybody who has worked in the field of
education is likely to know, building courses for heterogeneous groups is very difficult –it
requires both a lot of time and money. There are different strategies to overcome these
tensions. One is to simply accept that creating courses for heterogeneous groups is a
resource-intensive undertaking, and make the resources available. A different strategy is
not to aim for a sophisticated and polished product, but instead, deliberately put together
something “quick and dirty”(Mason et al., 2017). The refugees{code} team did just that,
offering the first course within just a few weeks of intense activity. As a consequence, the
drop-out rate was very high, but still, this served as a good pilot project out of which
improved courses could be developed.
A more powerful content strategy to accelerate the development of programming courses
is working with and to adapt material that already exist, rather than starting from scratch.
The refugees{code} initiative is therefore a good example, because it was based on the
content of pre-existing MOOCs from various sources.
Adapt these pre-existing materials still took a lot of work, but it was still much more
time-saving and resource-friendly than starting from scratch. Also it works great in
heterogeneous groups because every learner is able to learn and program on their own pace.
Therefore, educational institutions should always consider, before creating something
new, whether existing educational resources (like open educational resources) could be used
or adapted to fit their purposes. Such an approach is advantageous not only in terms of
development, but also outreach and adoption. More cooperation and coordination between
traditional education institutions and civic projects like refugees{code} could lead to a
better distribution of overall resources.
Homework, practicing and feedback. Homework assignments should be given out
regularly and subsequently reviewed, preferably with every session. This serves as
feedback for both the course teams as well as the students. Useful examples are imperative,
whether on the presentation slides, other course materials or with homework assignments.
Since coming up with such examples is usually very difficult, using preexisting examples
whenever possible is preferable. Coding examples should be tested by another teacher first
before being tested in the field.
e-Learning. The delivery of learning materials via electronic devices can be valuable, but
this alone is insufficient and should be accompanied by comprehensive teacher support
(Dahya, 2016). One way of achieving this is the so-called “flipped classroom”model which
refugees{code} used as well. In this model, content is introduced through a MOOC as well as
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videos which can be watch by students online outside of class, which are later clarified and
consolidated in class by a teacher.
Communication and information flow. refugees{code} put much thought into how to
reach the target audience, and concluded that the prospects of reaching them digitally –or
that they will find the site of their own accord –were poor. Part of the outreach strategy was
to rely on word of mouth, and the flow of information was mostly peer-to-peer.
Therefore, it is necessary to develop a strategy for reaching them from the very beginning.
We recommend using offline events to explain the course concept to refugees and
holding regular events where refugees, teachers, volunteers and locals meet and chat.
In addition, we recommend the building of WhatsApp groups. We also recommend being
very patient with refugees and explanation to them.
Topic 3: participation. Locals. Although refugees{code} aimed specifically at refugees it is
important not to isolate refugees and treat them differently from the rest of the population.
Therefore, program participation should also be open to local students sharing similar needs.
This will also help to build bridges between refugee population and local communities. On the
contrary, not only can the locals be tremendously helpful to the course organizers, but also with
the needs of the refugees as well: they can give feedback to the participants, they can help them
learning the host country’s language, and with personal social contacts, which, like our
interviews showed, is the preferred form of interaction of refugees. If refugees were to work as
an isolated group, the success and the impact of the program would arguably be limited as well.
Women. As evident by the results, the vast majority of participants were male.
We learned only little about women. Most of them seemed to be housewives and active in
community work. Specialized programs and courses aimed at women which cater to their
specific backgrounds and needs might serve as a remedy for this discrepancy.
Companies. Many participants did not know or had difficulties imagining how work life in
European companies is like. Companies could help by, for instance, holding Q&A sessions with
programmers, giving tours of the premises, holding workshops or accepting interns.
Multipliers. An effective outreach strategy includes raising not just awareness but also
trust, and making the value to the participant immediately tangible. Working through
networks that have the personal trust of the refugees could help, for example members of
the refugees’community who are advanced tech users could act as multipliers to raise the
overall levels of coding literacy.
Topic 4: technical. Provide hardware. An essential prerequisite is having access to
hardware. Desktop computers or laptops are still important for most projects of this kind.
One way of creating access to these facilities is through providing laptops.
Storage. A centralized repository for storing all the course materials and homework
assignments is crucial. This can also be done via the e-learning platform.
e-Learning platform. With refugees as the main user base, lowering the barriers for usage
of the e-learning platform as far as possible is a good approach. Refugees have widely
varying tech literacy and levels of prior knowledge, and getting the entirety of the user base
to actually use the platform is obviously crucial for its success.
Topic 5: financial. Accreditation and grading. In cooperation with the Technical
University of Vienna, refugees{code} has found an interesting solution. The students who
teach our courses get credited with three ECTS for doing so. For the student teachers, this
serves as both a valuable experience as well as academic progress.
So, participating in courses aimed at refugees could be of much greater value to students
if it resulted in a form of recognized certification. Refugees{code} cooperates with the
Technical University of Technology and does stress this as an important factor.
Course fee. Since the drop-out rate seemed to be quite high in the case of
refugees{code}, collecting a minimal course fee or maybe a deposit in advance might be
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worth considering. This would serve as an incentive for the participants to attend the
course in its entirety.
Financing. Since the expenses for setting up programs of this kind are quite high, access
to sufficient resources and funds have to be assured. Without the cooperation with the
Technical University of Vienna, refugees{code} would not exist.
In order for projects to progress past the initial stages and eventually even scale up their
work, reliable sources of financing are crucial.
Conclusion
The goal of the refugees{code} courses is to impart in-depth skills in the field of programming
to refugees, and to put them into the position of being able to further these skills
autonomously. The textual orientation is mainly based on universities and colleges, while the
practical application and organizational orientation is a contribution by the civic society.
While refugees{code} was guided by certain principles and a clear goal, it would simply not
have been possible to plan this project in a traditional way. This combination of goals,
principles, and a flexible methodology allowed for iterative cycles. It is no wonder that AR itself
can be considered as a pillar of research in information systems. As refugees{code} started as a
university cooperation, the refugees{code}-team selected the participants and relied on the
Computer Science students from Technical University Vienna to prepare the curriculum, which
was delivered purely through direct instruction. As mentioned in the results, refugees{code}
started with little resources and structured their curriculum around these.
As the great potential that initiatives like refugees{code} have for education, there are
also substantial challenges. As we learned from the first course, the completion rates are
very low. Therefore, it is important to build an infrastructure and a learning environment
around the course. This learning environment includes providing mentoring and support to
create spaces where participants can learn. It was also found that having a pedagogically
trained staff with sufficient knowledge of the English language is necessary to cater to a
heterogeneous group. Also, varying teaching strategies according to the needs and skills of
the learner is necessary.
As the results also show the informal organizational structure is coupled with a strong
learning culture, where experimentation is encouraged and failure de-stigmatized. This
allows an iterative and adaptive project design according to user-centered principles with a
high degree of networking and exchange.
With the field of public education and its old structures being arguably overloaded, the
doors for innovators and reformers are wide open. As refugees{code} has demonstrated,
civic approaches can bring benefits like innovation, expertise and energy to educational
institutions. It can serve to counteract excessive bureaucracy, lack of transparency and poor
coordination of public education institutions.
We conclude that bringing successful education to heterogeneous and culturally
different groups is multi-faceted. It is not something any individual organization or project
can do; it can only be the result of a system of different actors working together with
traditional educational institutions.
Notes
1. EUROSTAT: Asylum in the EU Member States. available at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/
documents/2995521/7203832/3-04032016-AP-EN.pdf/790eba01-381c-4163-bcd2-a54959b99ed6
(accessed July 12, 2017).
2. www.derbrutkasten.com/a/refugees-code-fluechtlinge-zu-programmierern-machen (accessed
July 12, 2017).
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3. www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/education-partovi-computer-science-coding-apple-
microsoft.html (accessed July 20, 2017).
4. The content can be viewed and reviewed here: https://github.com/votacom/it4refugees (accessed
July 12, 2017).
5. Slack is a web-based instant messaging service.
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Corresponding author
Daniela Wolf can be contacted at: daniela.wolf@fernfh.ac.at
For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
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