Johannes Berger was 14 when he first came into contact with programming at school. At the time he bought a book to learn more about it. But the book didn’t make it any easier to get into the subject. Later on, he noticed during his computer science studies that many of his fellow students also had difficulties. Berger recalls that the courses offered at the university were far from practical. At the same time, he spent a lot of time using social media while on public transport. He figured that his time could be used much more sensibly.
It was during his studies that he came up with the idea of teaching programming using an app. In an interactive way and having fun doing it. By 2016, this idea had evolved into the start-up company Mimo, which he now runs together with the three other co-founders.
Their concept is based on evidence-based educational research and essentially on a four-step model: introduction, recognition, recall, and reproduction. Learning in small blocks works better. This has been proven. Mimo developed our own concept for the programming steps, which also includes tests for users.
Berger: “There were more women than men in the field of computer science during the post-war period. In the early 1980s, almost 40 percent of computer science students were female even back then. But today, 80 percent of developers in Austria are male. There are more men than women who are creating teaching materials and courses – and they’re once again targeting a mainly male audience. This, therefore, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We want to appeal to women and men in equal measure and remove any unconscious biases. Learning to program can be beneficial for both women and men because it offers a valid career path.”
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