About

PDP (Professional Development Program) is one of programs offered by EIT (English & IT, pronounced "eight") for educational opportunities to the youth in developing countries.

Mission

PDP aims at providing the youth in developing countries who are keen to become professionals with skills of English and/or IT with opportunities of hands-on training by experienced professionals and development of their knowledge & skills for their professional careers.

Long-Term Goal

Foster & Help the Youth in Developing Countries Aquire Their Skills toward Careers of IT Professionals or Technical Communication Specialists

Internship / Apprentice

We plan to create internship/apprentice opportunities for our trainees through the digital marketing agency Digital ZeeKwet to work with experienced IT professionals in an actual project for a job order from a client of Digital ZeeKwet.

In the future, we would like to incubate IT startups in remote areas (like Myeik) such that pairs or teams of IT professionals and technical communication specialists work together for job orders from foreign clients.

Short-Term Objectives

Offer a free "IT Coaching" program to the youth with basic IT literacy who will be trained to develop their "practical skills" for becoming IT professionals through "hands-on" practices
Offer free lessons of "English Technical Communication" to the trainees for getting ready to international working environments and/or becoming technical communication specialists

Trainees in our program can enroll in (a) or (b) or both.

Methodology

How Do We Plan to Train Trainees?

Trainees are trained like athletes.
Trainers train them like their coaches.

Learning Methods

The methodology of training in PDP employs the following learning methods.

Project-based Learning
Immersion (or Submersion)

The second method for an early stage of acquiring skills of programming may sound unusual to many people and may also be contraversial, although it is well-known & often used in teaching a foreign language. We will present some justification of using immersion (or submersion) for acquiring basic programming skills from our perspective below.

Project-Based Learning

In PDP, training for IT developers starts from clarification of a goal to be achieved and ends with outcomes of the entire process (i.e., a project) toward the goal.

When a trainee tries to clarify & comprehend a goal (i.e., what to be achieved), the trainee figures out what sub-goals exist (i.e., tasks to be done for achieving the goal). While the trainee repeatedly breaks a goal down to sub-goals, the trainee reaches tasks simple enough to find how to carry the tasks out.

We create some original projects as well as using existing projects published on Internet such as ProjectLearn.

In contrast, the conventional way of teaching programming starts to teach a language syntax and then how to use it. Thus, learning starts with a syntax element (aka a language construct), such as a block structure, a loop structure, and a data structure (e.g., string and tree), without knowing what it is useful for.

Immersion

In the context of teaching a second language, "immersion" means to learn a second language by immersing a learner in the second language & its culture (e.g., staying in a country where it is the mother language). In fact, a baby learns a language by immersion (or submersion?). Immersion is often used for learning oral communication in an early stage of language acquision like young ages.

In immersion, a language is learned without teaching its grammar explicitly. It is interestingly noted that immersion is Emphasis on Communication over Language ( "Need Immersion Teaching Strategies, and Stat? Here Are 10 to Shock Your Lessons Back to Life" by FluentU).

By analogy, we consider the same concept is applicable to learning "programming" rather than a programming language. That is, start with thinking what to do (i.e., "what to communicate" in acquision of a second language) and find how to implement it by using the programming language (i.e., "how to express it" in the second language).

Remark:

Another major difference between our training and others is that PDP does not set a particular length of each training topic. A training class on a topic will end when a coach thinks trainees completed its planned project(s) and achieved the expected objectives of the class. In addition, all trainees in a class do not need to do the same task at the same time and/or the same pace. They are like individual athelets and hence they may have different training workouts.

Curriculum

The following diagrams show structures of our curriculum that consists of two tracks: IT-Track for becoming IT developers and Comm-Track for becoming technical communication specialists. Except the programming basics and the English basics that are prerequisites for training on other topics, there is no specific ordering among topics shown in the diagrams.

Curriculum Structure Draft v.0.2 (Sep 27, 2021)

Overall
IT-Track
Comm-Track

Entire Curriculum

IT Track Curriculum

Tech Comm Track Curriculum

Abbriviations: "JS" for "JavaScript"; "Dev" for "Development"; "MM" for "Multimedia"; "RW" for "Reading & Writing"; "OP" for "Oral Presentation"; "Bus" for "Business"; "DM" for "Digital Marketing"; "Mgt" for "Management"

What Topics Are Selected for IT Track?

The following is a list of major topics tentatively selected for IT Track. Note that these are categories of projects that trainees work on, instead of subjects of courses in academic degree programs. For example, Web application development often requires to use an SQL database and hence trainees learn how to use a database through its project.

Website Development
Mobile App Development
Web Application Development
Data Analytics

PDP first selects Website Development as an entry point for trainees to acquire basic skills necessary for IT professionals because the topic is "relatively" easy & quick to learn and related to the next two topics.

Mobile App Development and Web Application Development are selected aa the next two topics because they are highly demanded now and expected to remain so in this decade. In addition, our coach is well-experienced on these three topics.

The last topic Data Analytics is selected because it is expected to be the most growing topic in IT fields. Although PDP does not have a coach with professional experience on it at this moment, we plan to invite someone for training on data analytics later at least for a short term.

This list of topics is just tentative and hence subject to change. Whenever we find more attractive & feasible topics, we will update the list.

Example Syllabi

As examples, the following are a few essential topics that trainees learn in their early stage of training in PDP.

Programming Basics

This is offered to trainees without prior experience of programming. They acquire basic skills of programming before they start to learn a particular topic of development. Its syllabus is generic and designed independent of a programming language chosen for it. PDP currently has the only one coach who chose JavaScript as a programming language used for this topic at the first time of offering. In the future, we plan to invite a developer who is well-experienced in Python and ask her/him to be a coach on this topic.

Generic Syllabus (Draft v.0.2)

Website Development I

This is likely the first developer's topic for trainees who meet the prerequisite "Programming Basics". Trainees learn development of websites in different ways: Website templates, CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress, and custom-made websites.

Generic Syllabus (Draft v.0.2)

Mobile App Development

This is to learn development of Apps on both platforms Android and iOS. Details are to be announced.

Technical Communication Reading & Writing I

This is offered to trainees who already have basic skills of reading & writing enough for communication by text messaging in English (e.g., emails, text chats, and posts on forums). Trainees develop two crucial reading skills through hands-on practices.
• Quick & accurate comprehension of the essence of technical information
• Quick search for useful & reliable sources of information
Trainees also improve basic writing skills for the following tasks.
• Communication by messaging
• Write a concise report or a summary

Syllabus (Draft v.0)

This also uses in part course materials for the intensive course given at Hiroshima City University in Japan.

Technical Communication − with a Logical Way of Thinking −

Who Are Involved?

Stakeholders

• Trainees

• Coaches

Are you interested in joining to PDP @ Myeik, Myanmar, as a trainee or a coach?

Training

The overall length of taining in PDP is not prefixed though, a typical length may be about 2 ~ 3 years for trainees who start without prior experience of programming and 1 ~ 2 years for trainees who start with prior programming skills.

Training Class

A class of training on each topic consists of only a few trainees (max 4 trainees per class) so that a coach can give close intereactions to each trainee. Once a trainee finishes training on a topic, the trainee selects the next topic from available topics. PDP plans to make about 3 topics available to trainees.

Training Sessions

Training on each topic is given in 2 sessions per week (1.5 hours per session), although trainees and their coach remain connected even after sessions by communicating & collaborating with each other on a channel of the groupware Slack.

PDP designs the curriculum & syllabi in which trainees are expected to work at home on unfinished tasks and/or assignments of a session for at least several hours till the next session. At the beginning of each session, a coach is expected to help trainees resolve troubles and/or difficulties that they have encountered.

Training on a topic continues till all trainees complete the topic's expected project(s) and hence there is no definite term of training on the topic. An expected length of training on a topic is typically several months though, it varies topic by topic and also depends on the progress of trainees.

Place for Training

The place of training is a workspace of Digital ZeeKwet by courtesy of its founder.

Admission to PDP

The status of a trainee is awarded after search & screening by a committee consisting of a few people appointed by the committe's chair (the founder of EIT). There is no minimum age requirement though, PDP requires a parent's consent for a trainee who is a minor (age less than 18).

Trainees are given the following benefits.

Free training by a coach who is an experienced professional
Free lease of a laptop to a trainee if the trainee doesn't have it

The following is the current number of trainees in PDP.

Provisional Trainees: Trainees who did not have any prior experience of programming and need to complete prerequisites (Programming Basics and English Basics)

IT Developer Trainees: Trainees with basic programming skills who are tarined in development projects with guidance of a coach

Techical Communication Trainees: Trainees who are trained on technical communication skills by an English specialist coach

Scholarship Awardees: Beside the common benefits to trainees, some trainees are possibly offered a scholorship upon the availability of funds.

People Involed in PDP

Trainees

The 1st generation of 3 trainees who have no prior experience of programming
One trainee who is a final-year student of Computer University, Myeik

Coaches

One professional developer
One English specialist

Administrative Staff

Manager
Founder

Questions?

Contact

Location:

Myeik, Tanintharyi, Myanmar

The largest city in the southernmost area of Myanmar called Mergui Archipelago (a candidate of UNESCO World Heritage)

Email:

info@8eit.org

eitpdp@gmail.com

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