Learn to Program: The Fundamentals
Jennifer Campbell, Paul Gries
Behind every mouse click and touch-screen tap, there is a computer program that makes things happen. This course introduces the fundamental building blocks of programming and teaches you how to write fun and useful programs using the Python language.Sign Up
Next session: 24 September 2012 (7 weeks long)
Workload: 6-8 hours/week
About the Course
A computer program is a set of instructions for a computer to follow, just as a recipe is a set of instructions for a chef. Laptops, kitchen appliances, MP3 players, and many other electronic devices all run computer programs. Programs have been written to manipulate sound and video, write poetry, run banking systems, predict the weather, and analyze athletic performance. This course is intended for people who have never seen a computer program. It will give you a better understanding of how computer applications work and teach you how to write your own applications. More importantly, you’ll start to learn computational thinking, which is a fundamental approach to solving real-world problems. Computer programming languages share common fundamental concepts, and this course will introduce you to those concepts using the Python programming language. By the end of this course, you will be able to write your own programs to process data from the web and create interactive text-based games.
About the Instructor(s)
Jennifer Campbell is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. Although Jen has taught many different courses since joining UofT in 2003, she loves teaching introductory computer science, for which she has co-authored a textbook and engaged in curriculum design. In addition to her teaching, she pursues research in computer science education. Her current research projects explore student experiences in introductory computer science courses and the factors that contribute to success. When not teaching and learning, Jen spends time running and has completed two marathons.
Paul Gries is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he has been teaching for over 13 years. During his time at UofT, Paul has won numerous teaching awards, including UofT’s most prestigious teaching award, the President’s Teaching Award, and a provincial award, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Association’s (OCUFA) Teaching Award. In addition to being an outstanding classroom teacher, Paul has also co-authored two textbooks and has been a leader in departmental curriculum design and renewal. His other talents include singing, sword fighting and consuming good scotch.Recommended Background
This course assumes no particular background.
Course Format
The class consists of 1 to 2 hours of lecture each week, which are made up of videos that are generally shorter than 10 minutes each. Each video contains integrated quiz questions. There are also weekly standalone exercises that are not part of the video lectures and a (non-optional) final exam.
FAQ
- Will I get a certificate after completing this class?Yes. Students who successfully complete the class will receive a certificate signed by the instructor.
- Can I really do this course if I don’t know anything about programming?Yes! We expect this course to be taken by people completely new to programming.
- Is there a textbook?No. This online course is intended to be self-contained.
- What resources will I need for this class?We use the freely-available Python 3 and the IDLE development environment (which comes with Python 3). The download is available here: http://www.python.org/download/. Download the most recent release of Python 3.
- What is the coolest thing I'll learn if I take this class?You will be able to develop interactive text-based programs such as a word search game.
No comments:
Post a Comment