“Code Yourself” and “A Programar”: A bilingual MOOC for teaching computer science to teenagers

Abstract

In a technology-fueled world, coding is an essential skill for young people. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which are free online courses available to a very large number of people, are an effective and increasingly popular option for teaching scientific topics to a worldwide audience. However, despite the large number of MOOCs available on computer science, there is a scarcity of coding-related MOOCs that are designed for children and teenagers. In this paper, we present a programming MOOC that was recently developed by The University of Edinburgh and Universidad ORT Uruguay for teenager high school students with no prior programming experience. The MOOC was collaboratively developed by the two teams, resulting in a shared instructional design but with a bilingual delivery: “Code Yourself” in English and “A Programar” in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the course design for a young audience and we discuss the international co-development of the course materials. Furthermore, we present results from its simultaneous bilingual delivery in spring 2015, where around 85000 students participated. Student surveys show encouraging results: more than 93% found that the course met or exceeded their expectations, and more than 90% stated that they plan to continue programming in the future.