HackDuke: From Scratch

HackDuke: From Scratch was born out of an unfulfilled necessity at Duke University. The HackDuke team knew that there was a plethora of conceptual and theoretical classes that Duke Computer Science offered us, but very few of them focused on the skills that software engineers needed to know and have in industry. What we saw was a lack of direction and guidance for fledgling computer scientists who wanted to work in industry of what to learn and where to learn it.

This is why the HackDuke team decided to leave HackDuke: Code for Good as a Fall-only event to bring HackDuke: From Scratch to life. This educational learn-to-build workshops series focused on teaching the exact skills (like HTML/CSS, Product Design, Data Science and more) that are needed in the tech industry in digestible, introductory, 2 hour chunks.

We couldn’t have asked for a more successful semester.

11 Introductory Classes

What did we teach?

HackDuke: From Scratch held 11 introductory classes this semester. Our goal was to help students walk away from the 2 hour workshop to have actually learned how to build something:

1. Intro to HTML/CSS
2. Intro to MySQL
3. Intro to Raspberry Pi
4. Intro to GoLang
5. Intro to Product Design
6. Intro to Data Science
7. Intro to Raspberry Pi & Java
8. Intro to UX/UI Design
9. Intro To Javascript & jQuery
10. Intro To Scala & Functional Programming
11. Intro To Node.js

Who taught the classes?

Classes were taught by Duke alumni from industry who we flew in thanks to support from Duke Innovation CoLab and Duke OIT. Some of the other classes were taught by Duke students.

A huge thanks to the following alumni who came out all this way to teach:

1. Bradley Rubin: MEM’ 14, CTO @Fotoswipe
2. Melissa Dalis: T’14, Data Scientist @Square
3. Dan Deng: T’14, Software Engineer @LinkedIn
4. Dennis Li: P’14, Software Engineer @Coursera
5. Alex Browne: P’14, Software Engineer @Plaid
6. Jefferson Prestes*: Developer Evangelist @PayPal

Jeff isn’t an alumni, but we’re super thankful for the classes that he’s taught on the delicious Raspberry Pi!

Another thank you to the following Duke students who also taught classes:

1. Michael Lai: T’16
2. Stephanie Engle: T’17
3. Ashley Qian: T’15

And lastly, a final thank you to the TAs who volunteered their time to help our instructors lead a smooth class as well as to answer all of the questions our students had!

How were the classes structured?

Our classes focused highly on interactivity as well as learning by doing. Each instructor was strongly urged to come up with a working demo in the 2 hours that they have available. Because of the way that we presented each class, students had a better idea of what they were going to learn because they knew what they wanted to build.

Overall Outcome

As an organizer, it’s certainly an incredible feeling to come to a point where you can say: “Regardless of whatever we teach, people will come and learn.” When we launched our first class on HTML/CSS, we had no idea how many people would show up. We never expected over 100 registrations on Eventbrite and a complete full house the day of the class. We were absolutely blown away at the enthusiasm the Duke community had towards learning, especially considering it was a snow day!

Over 60 students showed up for our class on HTML & CSS.

Out of the 11 classes that we had held, we had an average of 55 registrants and a turnout of 32 students per class.

A further breakdown of our From Scratch series is listed below:

1. Intro to HTML/CSS — 111 registered, 60 showed up
2. Intro to MySQL — 54 registered, 30 showed up
3. Intro to Raspberry Pi — 53 registered, 25 showed up
4. Intro to GoLang — 44 registered, 22 showed up
5. Intro to Product Design — 61 registered, 45 showed up
6. Intro to Data Science — 41 registered, 48 showed up
7. Intro to Raspberry Pi & Java — 16 registered, 10 showed up
8. Intro to UX/UI Design — 55 registered, 26 showed up
9. Intro To Javascript & jQuery — 83 registered, 36 showed up
10. Intro To Scala & Functional Programming — 14 registered, 12 showed up
11. Intro To Node.js — 26 registered, 25 showed up

Parting Thoughts & Things To Look Forward To

The HackDuke team wanted to launch a learning experience that would get students’ toes wet and introduce them the countless amazing things that they can build with what they learn in our classes. Our educational workshops empower students to be able to get a jumpstart to learning the things that need to know in industry as well as encourage them to become hackers, builders, makers and creators.

Not only did we see extremely positive response for our workshops, but we also saw how that accelerated the growth of a community of students who were interested in tech. HackDuke held a Tech Summer Intern Meetup the day after LDOC, and we saw a huge turn up to an event that in past years, had gotten little to no attention.

Our get-together attracted more than 50 students the day after the last day of classes.

HackDuke is constantly growing, changing and improving to inspire Duke students to become the best they can be. We are excited to announce that we will continue to host the HackDuke: From Scratch workshops in the Fall, that will be led by the ladies in Wiring With Women (the undergraduate Women in CS organization). We will also be hosting our annual event HackDuke: Code for Good — inviting 1000 college students from all over world.

HackDuke is an organization that is created by students, for students. Our mission is to support and strengthen the tech community at Duke with HackDuke: From Scratch as well as connect them to the greater national hacker community with HackDuke: Code for Good.

We are super pumped for what’s coming up next.