Final evaluation of the ‘5G Smart School’ project for innovative teaching in Italian schools

Title 5G Smart School

Location Italia (Roma, Milano, Torino)

Duration 2021-2023

Lead Partner Qualcomm Wireless Reach

Partners WeSchool, TIM, Acer

Funding Qualcomm

 

Context

After 2020, schools have undergone a rapid digital acceleration, but its potential is not yet fully exploited. Teachers mostly replicate old, outdated methodologies without benefiting from the potential of digitalisation. This also happens because teachers lack the necessary skills to accompany this change.

The 5G Smart School programme aims at overcoming obstacles to the adoption of wireless technologies inside and outside the classroom. These include addressing the need to create and share digital content and assessments, create new infrastructures, implement new privacy and security systems, and promote teachers’ professional development.

The programme provides teachers and students aged between 11 and 19 with new advanced digital tools and Wi Fi models. The devices provided by the project partners are connected to the 5G network, enabling ultra-reliable connections and increased opportunities for collaborative educational experiences within and between schools.

By connecting these tools to the platform created by WeSchool, teachers are given the tools to make teaching more effective and learning more engaging.

 

Generale Objective

The 5 G Smart School program seeks to accelerate the development of digital skills among Italian secondary school students Through an immersive smart school experience, the program will improve teaching and learning outcomes by utilizing next generation wireless technologies, 5 G connectivity, innovative teacher training on digital methodologies, and digital tools and content.

 

Our Contribution

The final evaluation methodology has been designed with the aim of highlighting the changes generated among the beneficiaries of the intervention, in particular teachers and students of the involved schools, to identify the observed results in terms of new competences acquired by teachers in the use of digital resources, and in applying those innovative digital methodologies during their classes.

The evaluation strategy focuses on three main aspects: the degree of relevance of the planned activities with respect to the beneficiaries’ needs and to the intervention context, their efficacy in reaching the expected results and the specific objective during the timeframe of the project, and the potential of sustainability of the gained results, evaluating the persistency of their contribution to the realisation of the general objective in the long term.

The definition of mixed evaluation methods allows the collection of qualitative and quantitative data, successively triangulated with the monitoring data provided by WeSchool.

Read more on our M&E and Impact Evaluation Unit