Lessons Learned Teaching Coding to Journalism Students AEJMC 2015

1. Lessons Learned Teaching
Coding to Journalism Students
Cindy Royal
AEJMC 2015
Associate Professor
Texas State University
cindyroyal.com
slideshare.net/cindyroyal

2. • Programming basics/JavaScript
• Data
– Excel
– Scraping with Python
• Charting tools
• Web Frameworks
• Comprehensive final project
coding.cindyroyal.net

3. A good interactive can tell a story in different ways
than text, photos or video

4. Teaching coding is different than teaching Web Desig

5. Students still need a solid understanding of
HTML/CSS
<p id=“name”>Your Name Here</p>
document.getElementById(“name”).innerHTML = “Cindy”;

6. It’s tough to get students from zero to
professional, interactive project in one

7. Coding isn’t one thing, it’s a lot of different
concepts.
Python
MySQL
Rails
Web Scraping
Bootstrap
Wordpress
Design
Visualization
GitHub

8. Computer science programs do not teach Web
Development
Computer Science
Web Development
(!=)=/

9. Teaching coding requires constant course
updates and modification of teaching
approaches.

10. Finding good, applicable datasets is difficult

11. Focus on exposure, perspective first. Skills
second. But the goal is to make things.