Code Club activities have been postponed until we can be sure to offer a healthy environment. Contact codeclub@ubclts.com for more details.

UBC + LTS

Coding Club

Welcome! We'll be using this page to share schedules, links, and other content for our Python coding workshops.

Vision

We're a team of volunteer researchers, made mostly by graduate and undergraduate students, from a variety of departments at UBC who incorporate coding in our careers. We are part of the UBC Let's Talk Science site in partnership with the Vancouver School Board, UBC Computer Science Department and UBC Learning Exchange. In supply to the growing demand of coding workshops and the small percentage of girls that follow computational skills to their careers, our goal is to teach coding using fun, hands-on STEM activities to kids in the Vancouver area.

In this weekly 6-week program, students will learn to code using Blocks and Python. In the first four weeks we introduce basic concepts including if statements, for and while loops, and functions. The last two weeks are reserved for a final project in which each student creates their own working game. We hope that this program will give you a sense of what some of the possibilities are for things you can create by coding, and give you the tools you need to pursue learning more after the program ends!

The program is primarily designed for students with no prior coding experience, but if you've already learned some things that's great! We'll work with you to figure out how to make sure you get the most out of the program, whether that's reviewing old concepts, working ahead on your own project, or learning by helping out other students in the group.

This spring, we're piloting a new advanced curriculum for returning students focused on data visualization, algorithms, and libraries. If this goes well, we hope to make it part of the regular rotation!

Goals of the workshop

1) Learn about how computers perform tasks by carrying out a sequence of operations, and that one of the big challenges in programming is to describe clearly what you want the computer to do.

2) Practice translating an abstract goal into a defined sequence of steps.

3) Develop skills in Python.

4) Develop skills at solving problems independently using Google and StackOverflow.

5) Have fun!