Successful bootcamp with Girls Code Club
For the second time, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering has arranged the course that invites girls studying at the gymnasium to try out coding. This year was different from the first, in the way that it took place physically, at the department’s two campuses in Johanneberg and Lindholmen, Gothenburg.
New useful tools
When sharing their experiences at the end of the course, it turnes out some of the participants were completely new to coding, while others had tried it before on varying levels. Several of them states that the bootcamp has ignited a spark or strengthened an already existing interest for coding and contributed to a will to practice it in one way or another.
Daniëlla, one of the participants, says that coding offers so many tools useful to practically any of the fields she imagines herself in later on.
Catherine is positively surprised. In fact, she had imagined it would be boring, but changed her mind during the bootcamp.
Chloe had been coding for quite some time before the bootcamp and had wished for the tasks to be more advanced, but she thinks that the teachers have been doing their best to adjust the level of the tasks to meet her previous knowledge.
Learning to code with help from Batman
Some of the girls describe how they have been learning the basics of Python during the bootcamp. With the programming language, they have been constructing a model for analyzing the visitor statistics for a website and how the interest for it has been changing over time.
Tanya, who participated in the bootcamp digitally last year, and this time was present as a teacher’s assistant, smilingly describes how they have been using Batman’s Wikipedia page as working material. It’s a good idea to alternate between different superheroes to be able to see the difference between the structures of the visitor statistics, she continues.
Getting to know the professionals
Not only did the girls experience programming but learned about sorting algorithms, sustainability, cryptography, and even hands-on hacking.
They got the chance to interact with professionals both at academia and industry and got to listen to various women working at Volvo and TestScouts, play an optimisation game with women at Jeppesen, a Boeing company, and visit the offices of Tibco where they designed different solutions for web applications.
Worth trying out
Not all of the participants visualize a future as programmers. One of the participants who was new to coding, says that it’s not unlikely that she will proceed with coding as a hobby, but probably not in a professional role. On the other hand, she is happy for the experience and have realized the benefits of being able to code after listening to the guest lecturers, who among other things have been sharing how coding is being conducted in their work.
In 2022, the bootcamp received funds from the educational area EDIT-I and ICT Area of Advance at Chalmers, Volvo, Tibco and Jeppesen, a Boeing company.
Learn more about Girls Code Club on the bootcamp's webpage.
Text: Agnes Ekstrand