Makassed Ali Bin Abi Taleb College (A.B.A.T.) in Beirut, Lebanon strives to provide learners with an immersive learning experience by integrating course curriculum with transferable skills and real-world problem-solving. A.B.A.T. is a Microsoft Showcase School and puts technology at the heart of its educational programming. From introducing students to robotics and fostering technological skills from a young age, teachers at A.B.A.T. provide students with the opportunity to use technology in innovative ways.

Rana Sabbidine, Principal of Makassed A.B.A.T. College, saw the opportunity to partner with Digital Media Academy to provide students with further opportunities to learn new skills and help bridge the gap between their in-classroom learning and solving real-world problems. Rana’s goals for incorporating Digital Media Academy curriculum into the school’s classrooms included helping learners develop 21st-century skills including data literacy, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication, as well as giving students the opportunity to practice creativity, problem-solving, and extend their thinking beyond the classroom. By bringing Digital Media Academy curriculum into their classrooms, A.B.A.T. was able to support their school’s vision through enhancing student engagement and project-based learning.

A.B.A.T. was teaching classes online at the time of partnering with Digital Media Academy and found that the use of new online tools helped students engage with their classes. Rana noticed that students throughout the school gained not only further applied technology skills, but also the ability to better reflect on, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize their core curriculum content. Furthermore, the students were able to seize the opportunity to collaborate with each other and develop their problem-solving and collaboration skills in the online environment. The courses taught at A.B.A.T. were:

• Cool Computers
• Don’t Stand Still Mate… Animate!
• Crazy About Games
• Learn to Code With Scratch
• The Power of Pictures
• Inventing and Reinventing Machines
• Game Play and Coding
• Fun With Robots
• Design Challenges
• Introduction to 3D Modeling in TinkerCad
• Game Designer Studio

Through participating in a wide variety of Digital Media Academy courses, the students at A.B.A.T. were also able to express themselves and gain confidence in working through and solving complex problems such as using coding to solve mazes and using geometry to create 3D models. Rana noted that the teachers at A.B.A.T. were very satisfied with the quality and quantity of resources provided by Digital Media Academy to support the learning in their classrooms, and the variety of topics well suited to each grade level. Teachers were able to integrate Digital Media Academy curriculum within the subjects they were teaching, and the students had a positive and joyful experience.