Digest #152: Teaching How To Code
Last week we had an interesting Twitter chat (#LrnSciChat) on the benefits and challenges of teaching students how to code. We thought it would be nice to follow up that Twitter chat with a digest on this topic. Guest host Dr Wilhelmiina Toivo (teaching assistant in Psychology at the University of Glasgow) joined the chat and shared her experience and useful resources during that session. Looking at a Forbes article from 2019 the message is clear: Programming and data skills are vital graduate skills that employers are looking for in candidates. But coding is not only an important skill to obtain, it also comes with benefits for cognition. Here are some useful teaching resources:
Image from Pixabay
1. #LrnSciChat on 29 Apr 2021 | Teaching How To Code, The Learning Scientists, @AceThatTest
This is the summary of the abovementioned Twitter chat. You’ll find many resources in there as well as experiences and tip from teachers who teach programming to their students.
2. PRIMM: Support for teaching programming in school by Sue Sentence, @suesentance
This is a teaching approach to programming that breaks down the task for students and provides teachers with a step-by-step guide to teaching programming. PRIMM stands for Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify, and Make. Look here for more info on the PRIMM project.
3. Learn R Resources by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, @pimpmymemory
This is a list I have compiled with different open educational resources to learn R. R is a programming language for statistics. You can create fantastic data visualizations with R, too, and an increasing number of psychology researchers are using R for analyzing their data.
4. PsyTeachR Course Books by Psychology Staff at the University of Glasgow, #PsyTeachR
Open educational resources for teaching and learning R for novices to advanced students. While most of these resources are made for students in Higher Education in mind, the Level 1: Grassroots course book is perfectly suitable for older students in secondary school, too.
5. 14 of the Best Resources for Teaching Children to Code by John Dabell for Busy Things, @busythings
A collection of a wide range of resources for younger children to get them into coding and programming. There is also the course ‘Teaching Programming in Primary Schools’ offered on FutureLearn. Spark the interest in coding early!
Image from Pixabay
From time to time, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:
Digest #147: Making Your Material Digitally Accessible
Digest #148: Engaging Students in Online Learning
