To aid participants in mastering such a difficult skill, there were eight student volunteers: three instructors teaching the content and five mentors providing individual attention and support. Lunches and refreshments were provided for free thanks to the generous support of the Google for Education program and WiCS. This reinforced interactions between participants, which ensured an open and friendly atmosphere that facilitated the learning experience.
Based on the feedback collected in the post-workshop survey, all participants would recommend the workshop to others and over 95% rated the workshop as excellent. Also, the majority of participants said they expect that knowledge gained in the workshop will be useful to their studies and workplace. Most importantly, after participating in the workshop, all participants reported that they feel more confident to take introductory programming CS classes than before the workshop.
The workshop has not only shown how powerful and useful a skill coding can be, but it demonstrated that learning how to code can be a highly social and engaging activity, a perfect opportunity to entertain curious minds and ways of thinking. Or, as expressed in the words of one of the participants: Perhaps it would be difficult for people to think one weekend can change a person’s life, but for a naturally curious person such as myself it has. I never thought it would happen, but lately, anytime I hear about a cool new feature or even when I am on the Internet, my mind always asks: “Oh I wonder what the code for this is?"
