DNA and 普通話 (Mandarin): Bringing introductory programming to the Life Sciences and Digital Humanities
Mark D. LeBlanc, Michael D. C. Drout · Procedia Computer Science · 2015
The ability to write software (to script, to program, to code) is a vital skill for students and their future data-centric, multidisciplinary careers. We present a ten-year effort to teach introductory programming skills in domain-focused courses to students across divisions in our liberal arts college. By creatively working with colleagues in Biology, Statistics, and now English, we have designed, modified, and offered six iterations of two courses: “DNA” and “Computing for Poets”. Larger percentages of women have consistently enrolled in these two courses vs. the traditional first course in the major. We share our open source course materials and present here our use of a blended learning classroom that leverages the increasing quality of online video lectures and programming practice sites in an attempt to maximize faculty-student interactions in class.