Who’s Behind 42? — Pegor Papazian, TUMO Center for Creative Technologies

In 2019, the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies partnered with 42 to establish 42 Yerevan. Sharing a commitment to the 42 network’s core values, TUMO aimed to expand its educational reach. We had the opportunity to sit down with Pegor Papazian to discuss TUMO’s innovative pedagogical philosophy, its mission to make tech education accessible to Armenian teens and adults, and the story behind the partnership with 42.

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us more about your educational and professional background?

My name is Pegor Papazian. I’m the Chief Development Officer of the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies and I am one of its founders.

My background is very eclectic. I worked as an architect for a while, but I’ve always been a computer nerd. As a teenager, I learned to code and even did a few jobs on the side. When pursuing my master’s degree at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I switched back to computer science. There, I worked in what was then the AI lab. After I got my computer science degree, I combined those two sides of the profession and opened a company in Barcelona specializing in geographic information systems and urban planning using computational techniques. I then became a partner in a software development firm in California before finally moving to Armenia with my family. That eventually led me to join the TUMO team, which was founded in 2011 by my wife, Marie Lou Papazian, our CEO and my boss.

Could you tell us more about TUMO?

TUMO is an after school program for teenagers that focuses on skills at the intersection of technology and design. We cover 14 skill areas ranging from coding, robotics, and game development, all the way to creative writing, filmmaking, graphic design, and more. We’ve developed a unique learning management system called the TUMO path.

Students create their own learning path by alternating between three learning formats: autonomous learning, workshops, and labs. Autonomous learning is done with the help of coaches. The coaches are typically our former students, not teachers per se. Workshops last about a month and are guided by an industry professional in that particular skill area. Learning labs are an advanced workshop led by top professionals from all over the world who volunteer their time.

Our students can stay here as long as they want. On average, they stay two and a half years, coming once or twice a week for two hours at a time. They can leave when they want. Our philosophy is called “walk away pedagogy,” which asks the question: if kids could walk away from school without any consequences, what would it take for them to keep coming back and achieving significant learning outcomes? TUMO currently operates in 10 different countries, many with multiple locations.

Could you please tell us more about the story between TUMO and 42? How did you first come across 42? How did you start working together?

TUMO’s first international location was in Paris, which opened about seven years ago. At the time, we were going back and forth and getting to know the ecosystem within Paris in particular when we were introduced to 42. We visited the campus and were immediately quite inspired. We had been thinking about extending our programs to 18+ in Armenia. We thought partnering would be a very quick and efficient way to do so and eventually created 42 Yerevan thanks to a grant that we secured from the European Union.

Armenia in particular has a very fast growing ecosystem of tech companies with a big hunger for software engineers and coders. The formal education system was having trouble modernizing and scaling up to the demand. 42 offered the really attractive feature of opening the profession to individuals whose backgrounds had either prevented or discouraged them from pursuing a formal computer science education. The idea that someone who had trained as a dentist could turn into a software programmer was very attractive to us. It was a logical way of supplementing the workforce in Armenia very quickly.

What would you say is the main thing that sets 42 apart from other coding schools?

There are a lot of features that we really like. One is that it’s teacherless, something TUMO was a little envious of, if I’m completely honest. We don’t have teachers, but we have staff that teach and work with the students. 42 has found a way of being purely peer-to-peer and that is quite unique and attractive, and almost a proof of concept in itself.

42’s fundamental pedagogy is also very appealing. I find starting with C and emphasizing hardcore skills rather than what’s in demand right now in the markets interesting.

What are your ambitions for the future of 42 Yerevan?

We would like our footprint to grow and reach other regions, particularly in smaller towns, far away from the capital city. One strategy is our TUMO boxes, satellite classrooms that we can deploy everywhere. We found a way of having them work in relationships with larger, more central locations. This model does not exist with 42 yet, but we do have the ambition of creating a model that would still use the peer-to-peer pedology while being less centralized in the capital.

How do you think the world of education is going to evolve in the coming years?

I can tell you how I would like it to evolve. Personally, I’d like education to become more self-directed for teenagers and university students. I want students to participate because they want to, not because they have to. I want them to participate because they value the skills they’re building and the knowledge they’re acquiring rather than the certification being valuable. The fact that 42 Yerevan can function without awarding a diploma shows how the future education systems are much more focused on what you can do, not what certifications you have.

Agency is essential for students. With this model, they have more choice and are able to combine learning resources in a way that makes sense for them instead of learning from a pre-packaged curriculum. One of my convictions is that AI will allow people to start picking and choosing education resources that are online and combining them. For example, a student might do one level on Coursera course, then go watch a YouTube video, jump over to Khan Academy, and end up doing an MITX course or another combination of their own.

We are actually working on something that will allow you to do that. When that catches on, producers of educational content will start designing resources with combinability in mind, changing the way we consume education: on demand and adapted to learners’ needs.