When I was at this conference last week, I had an online programming workshop for my students. I didn’t think my students were getting the assignment. In particular, this Wednesday’s class was tough – like really tough. But then I started reading their essays about the online workshop:

• “The number one take away I have learned … is taking the process one step at a time.”
• “I didn’t understand what the actual purpose of coding and graphing was, but these lessons put it into perspective, and how it can actually be useful.”
• “I needed to have these skills to enter the scientific/medical fields I want to work at”
• “What a workshop! I love solving puzzles and computer science…”
• “it didn’t work, but I didn’t give up”
• “taught me patience and persistence”
• “It took a lot of time and patience to finally get it to work.”
• “But when I actually got the hang of it, it was a little fun”
• “One wrong line can mess up the whole code and you’ll have to go back and fix everything.”
• “It takes time and patience”
• “I knew I could do it, I just had to push myself to do it. When I did, I was unstoppable with coding.”
• “I always thought that programming was only for people who were naturally “good with computers”, but this workshop completely changed my perspective of it.”
• “One of the biggest lessons I learned was how important it is to break a big problem into smaller, management parts.”
• “Making mistakes are part of the process”
• “But it wasn’t all bad… it was cool and interesting So, if you want to go for it, I say go for it but remember patience’s is key.”
• “…paying attention to each and every detail. and not giving up…”
• “One other important point I learned is that computer modeling is not only reasoning but also creative.”
• “First of all, don’t despair if everything isn’t clear in the first run through.”
• “Sub-problems are bound to occur”
• The experiment reminded me that programming is not just about knowing Python or any other language, but about being precise and detail oriented.

Is this all AI generated? You never know, but with phrases like “Spyder Computer Modeling” it really shows that they novices (I don’t know that an expert would use that phrase) and engaging with the material. So likely a win!

There were also a bunch of folks who were struggling. But I was generally surprised by the amount of excitement with the project.

Things are looking up! When I was at the conference last week, one of the workshop leaders came up to me after his workshop and said, “These students are great. There is hope for our future.”