A wonderful experience as a section leader in Standford Code in Place program

I just spent two months’ wonderful experience as a volunteer section leader in Standford Code in Place, which is a community-service virtual coding education program in the time of COVID-19. It is a very special and history making course with over 800 great teachers and 8000 students all over the world.

Code in Place is an introductory programming course using the Python language, with material from the first half of Stanford University’s established intro course, CS106A. It is operated by some great Stanford professors and instructors. As far as I know, this is the best online course nowadays as it creates a learning community with some great ideas and tools like section, Ed and Zoom.

In this journey, I lead a section with 8 lovely students. Section is what makes CodeInPlace different from other online courses. It is a small learning group and sectionees meet via videoconferencing once a week with a section leader. In every section meeting, I helped consolidate students’ understanding of the concepts presented in lectures and gave students the opportunity to problem-solve in an active learning setting by having them come up with the solutions with my facilitation. This is my first teaching experience and it is such a great start with so many tips and inspirations from the best instructors. I feel very enjoyable and grateful to be part of this community. Thanks for all the instructors and my lovely students. In this COVID time, it’s so special and I will definitely miss it.