Africa’s workforce is the least skilled in the world, constraining economic prospects. Too many students in Sub-Saharan Africa are not acquiring the foundational skills they need to thrive and prosper in an increasingly competitive global economy. The current state of education in Africa reveals a need to develop youth programming that spark passion and skills to succeed in STEM careers.
Since 2015, each year PARC hosts a robotics competition. Teams are given 3 months to prepare for the challenge and then meet in person to compete. With the pandemic restricting travels, we have created opportunities for teams to engage virtually.
The PARC Virtual Learning Platform is specifically designed for African context.
Users create their accounts and navigate the platform to access coding games, workshop to design and program robots. The challenge themes are relevant to African communities and the platform features consider common needs expressed by STEM educators such as online & offline capabilities; written & video tutorials; curricula & quizzes; training & certifications.
We have adapted the PARC VLP for our annual competition which we held virtually this year, for the first time. 150+ teams from 33 countries competed using the PARC VLP.
Currently anyone can access and can engage with the platform directly, however with the PARC VLP there is a long term goal of offering the learning platform to classrooms around Africa.
We are partnering with schools in Senegal to bring this platform to the classrooms by incorporating it in the school curricula. We will scale the PARC VLP to schools in other countries.
When it becomes safe to travel, we will continue having physical PARC competitions where teams gather to compete. However, we will continue to maintain virtual activities and competitions to increase accessibility to teams unable to travel.
To access and engage with the PARC Virtual Learning Platform, make an account at www.parcrobotics.org/learn
