Madelynn Dickerson, Research Librarian for Digital Humanities and History
Learn to Code with Me is a recurring workshop series focused on learning introductory computing skills together in a friendly, supportive environment. Participants meet bi-weekly during the quarter in a format much like a book club.
Foundational coding skills have never been more important, and there is a plethora of options online for learning them. Outside the traditional classroom, self-paced opportunities abound – from paid tutorial sites like Lynda.com, to “massively open online courses” (MOOCS), which are free online courses where anyone can enroll. The problem? Many participants never finish these self-paced courses, and there are often few opportunities to meet and engage with fellow students off line.
UCI Libraries started Learn to Code with Me to bridge the gap between the self-paced tutorial and the classroom and build a community of learners who could help each other learn new technical skills using openly available resources. The focus of the course supports UCI students, faculty and staff who are interested but otherwise new to coding. The first meetings began in January 2019 with participants learning the fundamentals of programming with JavaScript using free lessons from Khan Academy.
“I liked the Learn to Code with Me sessions,” said one participant. “I had the support of the Libraries and those in attendance, but it was low-pressure and non-competitive. I’m completely new to coding so it was nice to work at my own pace, but also have the support of others.”
This academic year, Learn to Code with Me will focus on learning Python programming language, working with texts and cleaning data using lessons from Programming Historian, a journal of digital humanities and digital history methodology. One of the goals in choosing this new topic is to encourage individuals from the humanities and social sciences to explore coding.