This year at SCIL I’ve had the opportunity - and the "challenge" - of thinking through the challenge of delivering a course in Software Development completely online.

The students in the course are Year 11 (16 and 17 year olds) and while the initial class size is small, the challenges have nevertheless been significant - although helped by some very eager students.

A real problem in the course has been the difficulty of overcoming fear and the conceptual blocks in the early stages.

Those of us who have ever learned programming know just how challenging it can be. The field is so foreign - new concepts, new vocabulary, and many new problems - that seem so hard to fix!

My initial steps led me to create code samples, screenshots, step-by-step walkthroughs… and even made heavy use of a stack of animated webcasts demonstrating the concepts… but for school students the solutions that often worked in my own learning (a Masters degree studied entirely in distance mode) just wouldn’t cut it.

In an attempt to deal with the challenge, the students and I have recently commenced a regular Monday evening Skype conversation. Initially I was hugely skeptical - hoping really just to use it to stay in contact with the students and encourage them.

Rather than that, it has actually proved to be a pivotal tool in the students’ learning. I’m able to send them an initial file for them to start from. As we work, students are able to try their code and use the text chat to exchange code samples. The synchronous ("live") nature of the discussion means that we’re able to quickly respond to the inevitable problems - that early in a developer’s learning are so difficult to solve.

At this stage it all looks positive… I’ll keep you posted!