Video- Welcome to Class - Dr. Chuck

Hello, and welcome to my Programming for Everybody course on Coursera. My name’s Charles Severance and I’m a Clinical Associate Professor in the University of Michigan School of Information. I’m convinced that anyone can learn to program, and I’ve built a course that introduces you to the basics of programming. You don’t need to be a math expert. If you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers, you are ready to take this class. But I don’t just want to teach you the Python programming language. I have a few other goals. First, I’d like to teach you how to take a programming class. There are lots of wonderful resources like Khan Academy and Code Academy and code.org on the web that can teach you bits and pieces of programming. Perhaps you’ve even started to learn programming using Scratch or Minecraft. But learning on your own will only get you so far. And programming classes can be challenging. So I want you to develop skills in taking programming classes, so that you can successfully take other courses, like those from Rice University, the University of Washington, or others. My second goal is teach you how to mentor others, to help them learn programming. Because if we’re truly going to achieve programming for everybody, we need lots of mentors. Even in this class, you will learn a great deal from the other students and Community Teaching Assistants. And one-to-one interaction is really important. Especially when learning complex skills like programming. My third goal is to give everyone a kit of free and open materials so that anyone who’s a teacher can teach a version of this class locally. All the materials in this course are available under a Creative Commons license. The book is free. The PowerPoint files are free. The video and audio materials are free. And the autograder that I use in class is also free. I provide you a link to our Open Michigan website where you can download all the materials for the class. I firmly believe that beginning classes need to be taught in one’s native language, so I want to encourage teachers around the world to take my materials, translate them, remix them, and republish them with a Creative Commons license. I would like to see the textbook for the course also made available in many different languages as well. To sum this all up, I see Programming for Everybody as much more than a single class, I want this to become a movement that creates an expanding open ecosystem that brings us all closer together. And helps us move towards a world where programming is truly for everybody. See you in class.