DT Challenges: Looking Back Moving Forward

As we are nearing the end of the public funding of the National Digital Technologies Challenges project, I want to stop for a moment and reflect on this amazing project and what it has achieved. I’ll also explain what we’re doing to keep access to the DT challenges open as the funding comes to an end in December.

The idea for the project came about as a result of curriculum development to support non-specialists teachers with the teaching of the new Digital Technologies subject in the classroom. After the submission in response to RFT PRN.AD16/001144, “National Digital Technologies Challenges to support the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies”, the project was awarded to the consortium, led by The University of Sydney, in May 2016. For the following six months the team performed initial work to scope the teacher professional development and the general concept of the DT Challenges. The content delivery started in early 2017 with the first DT Challenges released in July 2017.

In less than four years, 9,000 teacher enrolled over 230,000 students in 34 online DT Challenges resulting in 480,000 student course enrolments with millions of problem submissions in the Grok Learning Management System.

Our professional development activities reached over 7,000 teachers through a mix of workshops, webinars, conferences and other events. The DT Challenges are probably the largest Digital Technologies and Computational Thinking Resource in Australia and perhaps the region.

The four original writers of the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies continue to meet under the banner of the Australian Computing Academy and build out their amazing unpacking content for teachers.

The public funding of the DT Challenges project enabled us to build important capacity to design and deliver engaging online and offline course content. Couple this with the curriculum thought leadership and you get a potent mix that has led to a new-formed Schools Cyber Security Challenges project with Australian Banks, and automation project with the mining industry. Both have significant industry participation.

The public funding for the DT Challenges led to a significant buildup of capacity around the Digital Technologies Curriculum: Plugged and Unplugged Resources, Curriculum Unpacking and Professional Development. For the schools, public funding also meant subsidised access to the DT Challenges for a period of 3 1/2 years. From 2021, there will need to be a cost to access the challenges, to cover the ongoing infrastructure and maintenance costs.

The DT Challenges run on the Grok Learning Management System, akin to an iPhone App being hosted in the Apple App Store and running on iOS. Grok provides both the catalogue and the runtime environment for the DT Challenges, so that our students only require a browser to enjoy them. Grok provides the vital infrastructure to keep the DT Challenges running. When Grok and the Australian Computing Academy join forces, both the infrastructure and the content development will be under the same roof. This vertical integration will allow us to maintain existing DT Challenges easier, but also build new features more quickly. As a result, we can innovate faster. The walls between Grok and the ACA are falling.

So thanks to the Commonwealth, the public funding (your taxpayers’ dollars) have led to a capacity-building round the DT Curriculum. We believe and hope that we’ve been good stewards of your money and returned value to the Australian people. We have significant momentum, and the COVID-19-triggered push towards online learning has given us another boost. We will continue to make products and services for educators and their students.

We hope you will stick with us and continue to use the DT Challenges, the Cyber and Automation challenges, the National Computer Science School, Girls Programming Network, and the many more exciting things we have planned for the future.

Warm Regards,
The Doctor

The Australian Digital Technologies Challenges is an initiative of, and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment.