Computer programming is becoming an increasingly important part of biology (my own discipline) and a range of other subjects. Programming allows the analysis of data, the creation of software and the building of online resources and interfaces. There are a range of online courses that you can take to develop these skills, and use as teaching aids for students, that cover a lot of different languages with different applications:
Codeschool offers four key “paths” composed of sets of modules in different programming environments: Ruby and JavaScript (two different methods for online application building), HTML/CSS (web design), and iOS (for Apple apps). However, they also offer “electives” alongside the main paths, looking at R (an open source programming language), Git (a method for version control in the development of programming), and Chrome Developer Tools (for apps in the Chrome browser).
Codecademy, much like Codeschool, offers a wide range of programming languages. However, all courses through Codecademy are free of charge. The focus is on web programming using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and application building using Ruby, APIs, and Python. Codecademy also allows people to generate their own courses, meaning that there are many smaller sets of tutorials designed to teach specific principles.
An Example of Use
CodeSchool runs a course called “Try R“, which offers a few hours of interactive training in the R environment. For those of you not familiar with theR language, R is an open source programming language that is mostly built around data manipulation and analysis. The course itself loads within the website, with a simulated R environment within which the student can work. The content covered includes: syntax, vectors, matrices, summary statistics, factors, data frames, and “working with real-world data”. At Leeds we teach our MSc Biodiversity and Conservation students in R for a short period, but this is the kind of tool that the students can use to familiarise themselves more completely with the language. It could also be a gentle introduction to some of the R-based MOOCs that are run by Coursera.
Katatrepsis 