Apple announced this week that it was expanding its ‘Everyone Can Code’ campaign to in excess of 20 universities and colleges outside the U.S. The list includes Mercantec (Denmark), RMIT (Australia), Unitec Institute of Technology (New Zealand), Hogeschool van Arnhem en Jijmegen in the Netherlands, and last but not least, Plymouth University in the United Kingdom.
All these schools will offer the company’s App Development with Swift Curriculum, a 1-year programming course developed by Apple educators and engineers. During the course, students receive training in how to design and program apps for the App Store.
Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, said: “We launched the Everyone Can Code initiative less than a year ago with the ambitious goal of offering instruction in coding to as many people as possible. Our program has been incredibly popular among US schools and colleges, and today marks an important step forward as we expand internationally.”
According to the Cupertino-based company, one of the widest-ranging roll-outs of its App Development with Swift course will be offered by RMIT University in Australia, where it will be available online as well as via an on-campus course. The university also intends to offer a free summer school course and to provide scholarships for teachers who would like to acquire coding skills.
Apple launched its App Development with Swift programme early this year. The required course materials are available to download free from the iBooks Store. Initially, six community college systems which combined serve half a million students throughout the US started offering the course, but later it was expanded to 30 additional community college systems before being launched globally.
App Development with Swift forms part of what Apple calls its Everyone Can Code programme under which the company also offers coding training to elementary school, middle school and high school students.