Behind the Results
Decoding our survey results
It is midway through the year, and this is a great time to say thank you to all of our clubs who completed our annual census (can’t wait to see how the stickers are used!) Our survey gains valuable insight into our clubs, how they run, who attends them, the resources they use, the best parts of Code Club, and the bits we can do better. Let’s take a look at some of the survey results and some quotes from survey participants.
“I love all of the resources and info you send through — makes it easy to make Code Club an achievable thing to start up even if you are not terribly skilled in Coding to begin with. The kids at our school who attend Code Club find it so rewarding and I love seeing them so excited to share with each other — it’s a lot more social than people assume. Thank you!”
Getting to know our clubs
From our survey, 12% of the responders told us that they run more than one club. Some of our volunteers told us they have been running their clubs for 10 years — truly inspiring! Our volunteers come from a variety of careers, with 67% being educators. There was a lot of cross-over with some being both an educator and a STEM professional. From the survey responses over 50% of our clubs are run by 1 facilitator, with many other clubs having between 2 and 6 adult volunteers.
“The biggest benefits (in schools) are the social gains as sometimes the students might find lunchtime challenging and lunch coding club gives them an opportunity to do something they enjoy, work with like-minded students, and feel successful. I often see this making students' days brighter and they ask me for more. They have built a great mutual respect with me as the person supervising this club also.”
Our survey indicates that the young people attending are 40% female and 60% male. Our club sizes range from 1 club member up to schools where their entire student population is involved with 900 students. We also have clubs that have student mentors engaged each week, with 1 club sharing that they have 5 student mentors!
How our clubs run
63% of our clubs run a session once a week. The remainder of clubs are a mixture of running once a fortnight, once a month, weekly for a term, on a term basis, or during school holidays.
Some new survey questions this year showed us that 96% of our clubs run with one device per child, and 94% of our clubs have internet access that is either fast and stable, or reliable.
“Another benefit is really just giving options other than the “traditional” after school options like dancing and sport — not all kids are into that. Mind you, I have kids rock up in their footy training gear who geek it out with us — then head to footy training — that never happened when I was a kid, so awesome to see times changing!”
Our clubs use a range of coding platforms and access projects mostly from Code Club Australia and Raspberry Pi websites.
The impact of Code Club
Our clubs shared with us the positive impacts that coming to Code Club has on young learners. Our survey showed that attending Code Club helps learners to:
- improve skills in computing and digital making (96%)
- become more confident in their computer skills (94%)
- become better at solving problems (87%)
- think more creatively (87%)
How can we support you?
We’ve had some excellent feedback and ideas about how we could do more to help, and we’re going to work on a few of these suggestions in the next couple of months. Watch this space!
We always enjoy hearing your ideas on how we can assist you in running your Code Club. If you missed the survey but have an idea about how we can support you, please reach out to the team by emailing us at hello@codeclubau.org
Happy coding!
Kaye
Code Club Australia.
