Today’s school students are youths, who were born and are growing in the digital world. Adults often complain that youths would not be taken off the screens and pulled out of the virtual world. For zoomers, digital services and technology are an integral part of their life, where there is little room for physical activities and live communication. “Avangard” Center for Military Patriotic Education has found a way to engage such teenagers, to turn the military regime into an exciting experience and to open new perspective on military service.   

Specialists have created a computer system, artificial intellect (AI) of “Avangard”, which possess all the information about trainees and instructors, daily schedules, performance of trainees and all aspects of the educational process and, thus, will help the Center to manage its activities.

This unique computer system comes in several formats.  Physically, it is embodied in an announcement system arranged over the territory, in screens displaying the day schedule and performance statistics, in a mobile app, in information kiosks containing knowledge base, and in a visual image named IRA.

“Trainees coming to our “Avangard” Center are 9^thto 11^thgrade students. The life of 15 or 16 year old teenagers is full of gadgets, chats, online communication, and computer games. And they perceive the world as one big game. His means, we need to talk to them in their own language, using technology which would smoothly immerse our trainees into the educational process in a format understandable for them, with elements of a game”, said Darya Borisova, Director of the Center, detailing the concept of the project.

IRA will accompany the trainees in all aspects of their life and study at the camp, from waking them up to reminding them about lessons during the day. Furthermore, IRA will control trainees’ moves over the territory of the Center and, therefore, it will ensure safety during their stay at the camp.

The android also features an integrated trainee performance assessment system ‒ this will help instructors to objectively understand how their students are performing and assist youth leaders in providing incentives to those performing best during the day.

For instance, IRA will be able to create quests and model different situations for young people to prove themselves and to apply the knowledge and skills they’ve gained. The management of the Center believes that by adding game elements to the routine educational process they will achieve higher engagement of young people.

“Our main objective was to create a unique novel educational format which would make our Trainees perceive even complex topics such as patriotic education, military training and basics of safety management in emergencies as something new and extremely fascinating. We sought to make the five das the youths spend in our Center the brightest experience of the year”, Director noted.

“Avangard” Center located in “Patriot” Park in Moscow Region has already managed to receive its first shift.  In the future, the project expects to train some 30 thousands of senior students a year. The Center will arrange military training sessions including intense theoretical, practical and sports training. 

Furthermore, the Center has recently started an online training system. In our current epidemiological situation, online training format will help the trainees to leant specific features of military service and safety rules in emergencies and get detailed information about current military specialties without coming to the Center.