We created this course because we realized that many high school students wanted to, and were ready to, learn to code but many didn’t know where to start. At our University, we’ve heard too many stories of students who tried learning coding by Googling around for lessons and watching YouTube videos and walked away from poorly designed curricula thinking that coding was too difficult and/or “wasn’t for them”. It’s true that coding is hard – at times, especially in the beginning – but it’s also too important a skill for a STEM-aspirant student to give up on because of a badly made YouTube video.

This is why we designed this course — we want to introduce coding to students in a way that gets them excited about all that coding allows folks to do. We are educators and also parents, uncles and aunts and so we get how important it is to do this right and to do it in a way that allows the learners (your kids) to know that they can ask for help when stuck knowing that we’ll be there to help them get unstuck. After all, everyone gets stuck sometime when deepening their learning — we have designed this course and the support structure with that in mind. We hope students leave this course excited to learn more — and there is so much to learn that they, as we do, can happily spend their whole careers in it.

The online-only program is called The Joy of Coding. The website has further information, including cost and prerequisites. All students who apply will then be provided with an online screening module to ensure that they are the level at which the course is offered — please do let the students know that if they aren’t there yet, they will soon be once they have taken the relevant math courses – we know and believe everyone can learn to code and to have fun doing it. The program’s goal is to help introduce students to the exciting world of coding with the support of our instructors! We welcome anyone and everyone who has a desire to learn, including in particular first-generation coders! (We were first-generation once, too!)

If you have any questions, please contact us at joyofcoding@umich.edu.

I hope you and your family and loved ones are safe in these surreal times,

Prof. Raj