Teaching coding online to full-time library workers
My organization developed and ran a free 9-week online class titled “Fundamentals of Health Data Science” aimed at an audience of medical librarians. The course covers an introduction to Python in the context of working with a health-related dataset. The course was mostly asynchronous, with a group of 70 learners working on the same topics week-by-week, but we also hired librarians with Python experience to meet with learners and help them with the class. We think this format addresses some of the traditional challenges of completely asynchronous learning (isolation, lack of feedback) and completely synchronous classes (scheduling). This talk would present some background information on the class, the instructional approach we took, the challenges and successes we had, and the outcomes/feedback from class learners and helpers. This class will be repeated in the future, and presenting on it could help us receive more feedback on how to improve it going forward.
