IST LUNCH BUNCH

Computer programming is now a vital technical skill to prepare people for careers in a wide range of domains ranging from software engineering to computational science to public policy. Although schools are ramping up coding education efforts, still the vast majority of people around the world who want to learn to code do not have access to high-quality classroom instruction. Thus, the only way to scale up programming education so that it can reach a large portion of the world population is to develop and deploy online systems. In this talk, I will survey the state-of-the-art in helping people learn to code outside the classroom and present my own research in this domain. Specifically, my work centers on an online code visualization and peer tutoring platform called Python Tutor (http://pythontutor.com/) that I have been developing since 2010. So far, this platform has been used by over 3.5 million people in over 180 countries to visualize over 50 million pieces of code. Thousands of people each month use it to receive free tutoring from volunteers around the world. It points toward a future where millions of people can receive some of the benefits of face-to-face classroom education without being present in person.