Organizing an Online Introduction to Programming Course: The TinkPy Story
How we brought students of freshman and sophomore years together to learn to code.
In almost all engineering colleges across India and probably everywhere else, students who aren’t familiar with programming languages suffer and struggle in their language classes. Having observed the disparity between the students who already have a computer science background and those who don’t, the MEC Chapter of Tinkerhub Foundation took a step to bridge the gap.
TinkPy is a beginner level programming course designed and hosted by TinkerHub MEC. The intended audiences were students in their freshman and sophomore years in Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Model Engineering College, Kochi. The purpose of the course was to hone their skills in the area of programming.
A total of 151 registrations were received and 64 students successfully completed the course. Through effective follow-ups and management, we were able to keep our learners motivated throughout the event.
Organizing an Online Learning Program — Our Journey and Learning Process
First off, we took a few steps to understand the steps and best practices to pull off an online event:
Understanding What Students Want
- We held three meetings with the college’s Placement Cell and Training Cell Coordinators (and unofficial meetings additionally) to get as many insights as possible to understand student requirements.
- We invited potential participants to join the meetings to know exactly what they wanted.
Our aim was to design and host a course that the students required in our college rather than bringing in people and get them to like our course. We tailored our event structure to such an extent that it fed exactly what the students needed.
We designed the course so that even a 10th grader could pick it up. I took a small mock class for a first-year student to get her insights and feedbacks which gave us the confidence to proceed with the syllabus.
Communication with our Learners
The team started a WhatsApp group to create a common platform for TinkPy discussions. We were informal and friendly and were able to quickly build a rapport with the learners.
Phase 1 — Blockly Games
Google’s Blockly Games is a series of educational games that teach programming.
We wanted to start off with something simple and doable. Since most of our learners were new to programming, we assured that no prerequisites would be needed.
In the hands-on session, we introduced the learners to the interface and walked them through each puzzle. As some quick learners progressed level by level, we stuck with those who took more time. This was important to ensure that we were with them and that they could do it.
They got to know new functions in programming like loops, conditions, commands, if-else, and so on along each level. There were a lot of courses that teach theory followed by practical lessons. To do things outside the box, we started hands-on sessions from day one itself.
We made sure that everyone completed their puzzles during the class itself. The rest was left to them to solve in two days. The students shared their screenshot of the final output with us personally.
We celebrated every achievement in the TinkPy group. This motivated others to finish faster. Soon, we began receiving a lot more messages and screenshots which we regularly shared with everyone. The participants found it very thrilling and loved it.
Through this simple game, we made programming very much appealing to them and made them see for themselves that its something doable and easy and it improved their confidence.
Phase 2 — Python Programming using Snakify
The session was led by Steev James. Using Snakify, we gave everyone an introduction to Python. A few questions were worked out online. For others, time was given to solve the questions, and then those were solved onscreen.
A total of 20 easy level questions, including the ones that were done on screen, were given as work for them to do for the next day. Snakify enabled us to track the progress of the students with each question and with each session. However, we realized after the session that a lot many learners were slowing down because they had no target and no goal.
We had a two-pronged approach to this problem:
- We started setting short team goals and deadlines and pushed the students to meet it.
- We shared the progress of the top-performing students in the group.
This motivated learners to come to us with queries. While helping them out, we encouraged them to seek help from fellow participants who had already completed those levels. That move transformed the centralized approach to a network of peers helping peers.
Wrapping Up
In the end, the students who completed the event had worked-out a total of 89 programming questions throughout the event and were very much familiar with coding using Python. The success rate was very high and impressive with respect to similar events. Some students couldn't complete it because either they didn't have a PC, was ill, mobile data was less, or lack of interest. But we still ensured them that they can still complete it. Some of our students from TinkPy started participating in coding challenges and even secured prizes too.
We try to keep the group from being dead and share valuable content. Thus we wrapped up our first fully online dream event, TinkPy. The key to its success was not the initiative but how effective the follow-ups were done by the volunteers and mentors and how much the event was needed by its learners.
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