Workshop Information

The workshop is targeted at beginners with no prior programming experience or students in non-STEM fields. If you are a math or engineering student, you likely will have too much experience for this workshop to benefit you.

What am I going to learn?

The workshop will cover an intense 17 hour curriculum designed to give beginners complete, basic programming skills to use in their studies or workplace. The curriculum will cover basic programming concepts such as variables, data-types, branching, loops, functions and usage of libraries for simple numeric computations and plotting. Over the course of the workshop, participants will learn the Python programming language through lectures and hands-on sessions, supported by a team of mentors.

What do I need to bring?

The joy of learning and lots of questions! Also, attendees are expected to bring their own laptops. We might be able to provide assistance to participants who do not have their own computer. During the first day of the workshop (Friday evening) we will help everyone install the necessary software on their computers.

What is the format of the workshop?

On Friday we will help participants to install the software we will be using over the next two days and demonstrate how to run it to write simple Python commands. The goal is to have everyone up and ready for Saturday morning session.

On Saturday and Sunday we will have the interactive lecture from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, followed by a provided lunch until 1:00 PM. After the lunch, we will continue with the lectures, which will be followed by a hands-on session. During the hands-on sessions participants will work on a small project and will be supported by six mentors.

Mentors are helping to co-organize the event, teach curriculum and provide one-on-one assistance to participants. The low student to mentor ratio (5:1) will ensure that every student gets an opportunity to ask questions in person and gets individualized instruction during practical sessions.

Who are we?

Mentors and instructors are all current or former University of Waterloo students. We all enjoy programming and teaching how to code and have been doing this for a while now. We are affiliated with Women in Computer Science (WiCS) and value supportive, welcoming and beginner-friendly environment for all participants. WiCS have successfully organized similar events in the past:

This is a FREE event that includes morning coffee and lunch. The funding for the event (coffee breaks and lunches) was provided by Python Software Foundation as well as Women in Computer Science.

Dates and Times

  1. Friday, June 22       5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
  2. Saturday, June 23     10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
  3. Sunday, June 24     10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Sounds cool? Apply now!

The applications are now closed. We received close to 200 applications and are unable to consider any applications submitted after the deadline. If you want to be notified about future instances of this workshop, please fill out the following form.

Want more info?

Contact Ivana for any questions.