We created Joy of Coding 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 the University of Michigan, 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.
Our courses first introduce students to coding in an exciting way, then build on those skills in advanced courses to explore how coding powers modern AI. We are educators and also parents and family members, 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 sometimes when deepening their learning — we have designed these online, learn-at-your-own-pace courses and coaching structure with that in mind. We hope students leave this course excited to learn more. There is so much to learn that they, as we do, can happily spend their whole careers in it.
Each course has a web page with further information, including cost and prerequisites:
See course offerings page for a more comprehensive list.
Students with little or no knowledge of coding will apply for the Intro to Coding and Computational Thinking course. They will 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.
Students who have prior coding background, such as AP Computer Science or have completed Intro to Coding and Computational Thinking course (a prerequisite), can apply for the advanced Intro to Data Visualization & AI course.
Students who have completed Intro to Data Visualization & AI course (a prerequisite), can apply for the next advanced course, Intro to Training, Evaluating and Finetuning an AI.
If you have any questions, please contact us at joyofcoding@umich.edu.
We hope you will be inspired to discover the “joy of coding” through our engaging, interactive courses designed to make learning both fun and accessible for everyone!
Warm regards,
Prof. Raj
