Australian First: RMIT offering Apple’s Swift coding curriculum

In an Australian first, Melbourne’s RMIT University has announced they are offering a new Apple App Development course using Swift curriculum which has been developed by Apple to teach app development techniques to all ages.

Since creating the Swift programming language three years ago, Apple has poured huge resources into developing training and educational toolkits for all ages wanting to learn about coding and development.

Those tools included student and teacher digital text books to compliment the various learning apps which range from kids as young as Kindy right through to tertiary level.

What RMIT are doing is bringing the tools developed by Apple into the classroom via online courses, and enabling the learning through a structured course which will include tutors and mentors from the app community.

The online program was co-created and endorsed by companies like Tigerspike, jtribe and Bilue who will not only be giving back to the development community through participation in these courses but may find their next developer talent as part of the program.

Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives is in Australia for the RMIT launch saying “We are exited to see RMIT University use our Swift curriculum to equip students in Australia with the skills to carry them into the growing app economy”

“We believe coding is an essential skill that people of all ages and backgrounds should have the opportunity to learn, so that they have the ability to create something that can change the world”

Perhaps the most exciting part of the announcement is that RMIT is offering 100 scholarships for school teachers to enable them to upskill by completing the RMIT online program.

These scholarships mean that there will be more skilled educators in our schools to support the growing demand and implementation of coding as part of our curriculum across the country.

App development is at the core of the course, and at completion students will have uploaded their own app to the App Store.

This is a booming market, by 2022 it’s thought that more than 81,000 specialist tech workers will be required in Australia, while the broader intensive tech workforce will increase by 236,700 jobs.

Enrolments for the new iOS App Development with SWIFT Online program open today, with the course starting on November 20.

The Online course is split into five months of learning, which can be taking in one block, or on and off over a longer period.

Each unit of the course (there are five) will cost $549, or the entire course cost will be $2,199.  During the BETA roll out of the course a 60% discount is on offer, taking the cost to $219 per unit, or $879 for the entire series.

At the completion of the course, students receive certified credentials from RMIT, co-endorsed by industry partners.

Victorian year 9 and 10 students should keep their eyes open for the Summer Coding school also, which will be offered to 30 students at the RMIT City campus over four days in January 2018.

Trevor Long travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Apple – for details on our commercial arrangements and travel register, click here.