Nexon Foundation is stepping up efforts to strengthen information education capacity in schools at the local level.

On Thursday, Nexon Foundation said it signed a three-way memorandum of understanding with the Korea Beaver Association for Informatics Education and the Daejeon Education Information Institute under the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education to strengthen computing thinking and information education capabilities based on the free integrated coding education platform BIKO.

The agreement is the second local public education partnership based on BIKO, following an MOU Nexon Foundation and the Korea Beaver Association for Informatics Education signed with the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education in December. Along with the Daejeon Education Information Institute, the two organisations will support teacher training and student classes for elementary, middle and high schools in the jurisdiction through February 2027 and push to strengthen information education capabilities.

Under the agreement, the three organisations will jointly develop and run teacher training programmes. They will offer job-related training and voluntary training and provide lecture plans, practice materials, assignments and evaluation rubrics. For information education instructors, they will share analysis of past questions and ways to link lessons. They will also run and support professional learning communities by introducing best-practice software education classes and providing mentoring.

They will also systematically support student classes, from providing teaching materials to advanced learning for competition preparation. They will provide lesson operation materials such as unit-by-unit lesson plans, activity sheets and evaluation tools. They will also set up learning tracks for competition participation, including pre-learning for the Beaver Challenge, explanation sessions, the Nexon Youth Programming Challenge (NYPC) and the Informatics Olympiad, to drive step-by-step improvement in students' skills.

Nexon Foundation Chairman Kim Jung-wook (김정욱) said he hoped BIKO would help students in the Daejeon area access information education in a structured way and build interest and capabilities in programming. He said the foundation would actively support efforts to expand cooperation with regional public education so more students nationwide can develop computing thinking and coding skills.

Nexon and Nexon Foundation officially launched BIKO, a free integrated coding education platform, with the Korea Beaver Association for Informatics Education in February 2024 to strengthen teenagers' coding capabilities. The free block-coding platform Hello Maple, based on the MapleStory intellectual property, is also being used steadily in digital education settings through collaboration with schools and educational institutions nationwide.