{"id":91916,"date":"2018-11-15T10:46:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T09:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=91916"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:23:08","slug":"learning-to-code-huge-success-with-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2018\/11\/15\/learning-to-code-huge-success-with-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to code popular among students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday evening, 7 p.m. Which options do you have as a Rotterdam student? Watch the Champions League with your friends, join the fray in one of the many pub quizzes held around town or prepare physically and mentally for ESN Tuesday. At first glance, these all seem more attractive prospects than spending the evening hunched over a laptop in a small room in the Polak Building. But over 30 students actually take a different view.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAysha Gasanova<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

As the clock strikes seven, the participants ready themselves for an evening of building websites and learning code. \u201cCongratulations, you\u2019ve survived the first week.\u201d Their teacher for the evening, Mathijs de Jong (23, Economics research master), has a big grin on his face as he looks around the room. Because Mathijs knows what\u2019s up ahead. During the first week, the coding was all still quite basic (HTML, for those in the know), but things are going to get bumpy pretty soon.<\/p>\n

De Jong\u2019s joke can count on some laughs. But as he treats participants to a mass of coding lingo over the next five minutes, you soon hear the first sighs. And when he warns the class immediately afterwards (with the first latecomers trickling in, of course) that this is when things will be getting serious, you can almost feel spirits sinking.<\/p>\n

Everybody helps each other<\/h2>

De Jong isn\u2019t particularly surprised by the panicked whispering and looks of despair. \u201cIt always turns out OK,\u201d he predicts before starting the third meeting of the Web Development boot camp. \u201cYou tend to give up sooner if you\u2019re alone in front of your computer, but what\u2019s great about these lessons is the social aspect. Everyone helps each other and wants to learn from the other students.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Left: Mathijs de Jong (23, Economics research master)<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAysha Gasanova<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The Turing Society was started in Rotterdam three years ago by students Tomas Mo\u015dka and Teodor C\u0103t\u0103niciu. The Lithuanian and Romanian students were motivated by a wish to compensate for the paucity of IT and technology-related subjects in EUR\u2019s curricula by offering the students coding lessons. But was there actually a demand for this kind of knowledge in the university\u2019s student body?<\/p>\n

Yes, it turns out. By now, hundreds of students have participated in the Turing Society\u2019s workshops, boot camps and events (see frame). \u201cBut it amounts to more than just lessons,\u201d explains board member Daphne Cornelisse. \u201cAn entire community has developed around our activities. Students keep coming back, we have also organised loads of other activities and the boot camps are becoming more and more popular.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cutting their teeth<\/h2>

Since all the coding jargon goes way over my head, I take my time checking out who has shown up. And it\u2019s true: the 30 students cutting their teeth on CSS aren\u2019t easy to pigeonhole. For example, I\u2019m slightly surprised to see that while the male students are in the majority, it\u2019s only by a few participants. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things I particularly like about this boot camp,\u201d says German student Sarah F\u00fcrstenberg (19, Management of International Social Challenges). \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter which faculty you\u2019re from \u2013 we\u2019re from all over the university.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a student like Sarah, coding and building websites couldn\u2019t be more remote from the kind of expertise tested during ESSB\u2019s examinations. \u201cBut what I have noticed in my job is that it never hurts to know a bit about this sort of thing. I don\u2019t imagine myself doing this at home alone. Here we\u2019re all in the same boat. The participants all run into the same problems, which is why you support each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sarah F\u00fcrstenberg (19, Management of International Social Challenges)<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>

Teacher De Jong rounds off his explanation half an hour into the lesson. He calmly seats himself behind his desk and tells everyone to set to work on the assignments. In a regular tutorial, this is when everyone gets back to Instagram, catches up with friends or makes plans for the evening. But not here: two students make off, but the rest stay glued to their laptops.<\/p>\n

Make a good website<\/h2>

\u201cOf course we have someone drop out every now and then, but on the whole we see that students are very motivated,\u201d says Cornelisse. \u201cAnd we always get more applications than we have room for, so we can actually make a selection.\u201d To give everyone an opportunity to take part, the Society will be organising even more boot camps over the next few months. \u201cI\u2019m organising a boot camp myself in February, together with a few other people. It will focus on \u2018machine learning\u2019, which is becoming more and more prominent. For example, Netflix uses it for personalised recommendations, and Snapchat uses it place filters on your face.\u201d<\/p>\n

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IBCoM-student Nadine Steenstra (19)<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAysha Gasanova<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

After two hours of concentrated coding in Polak 1.10, the lesson is over. I make the rounds and ask the students what led them to enrol in the boot camp. For all sorts of reasons, it turns out. From sheer curiosity to an urgent request on the part of their employer. \u201cI wanted to learn something new besides the subjects in my degree programme,\u201d says second-year IBCoM student Nadine Steenstra (19). \u201cAnd this is definitely a challenge \u2013 I don\u2019t have that much experience in this area. What am I hoping to learn? I\u2019d really like to be able to build a proper website. But it\u2019s not just that. They\u2019re a really nice lot at Turing too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Turing board members\u2019 ambitions extend beyond a full room of students in Polak on a Tuesday evening. \u201cIn Lithuania they\u2019ve taken things even further with their local Turing Society,\u201d says Cornelisse. \u201cOne of the founders over there has continued to build up the Turing programme. They don\u2019t just organise activities for university students, but also for secondary school pupils, for example. We intend to expand in this area too,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n\t

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Turing Students Rotterdam is part of the Turing Society, a foundation that focuses on setting up a complete ecosystem for technical education, with the underlying objective of \u2018training a new generation of world-class coders\u2019. Last week student Maksut Gavaz was presented with<\/a> the 2018 SURF Education Award 2018 for his work in helping to establish and develop the Turing Society both in the Netherlands and in Lithuania. He has also been chairman of Turing Students Rotterdam.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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De redactie<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
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