Earlier this year, Dr John McLevey, Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, used SAGE Campus’ Introduction to Python for Social Scientists online course with his graduate students.
We got feedback from John and his students about why SAGE Campus and online learning were a good fit to develop students’ programming skills.
The challenge of teaching interdisciplinary students
As a computational social scientist at the university, John works with graduate students from different academic backgrounds who are acquiring computational techniques for a range of applications. However, the level of computational methods training across different departments was inconsistent, so John was keen to have high-quality resources he could direct all students to support their learning.
After reviewing the SAGE Campus Introduction to Python course, John was confident to give his students access, noting;
‘I must say [the course] exceeded my expectations… I thought it was extremely well done in all regards, including the design/presentation of the interactive materials. First class!’
The social science focus and examples used in the SAGE Campus course were also an appealing factor for John, who has used alternative online course providers in the past but found they were ‘not well suited for these disciplines’. On top of this, John could integrate the SAGE Campus course on the University of Waterloo’s learning management system, meaning it would be easily accessed by students.
All students were motivated to learn with SAGE Campus
Prior to starting Introduction to Python, John noted that the ‘students were enthusiastic about having access to the course’. The students reported that they took the course to develop their skills to enhance their research and some were specifically interested in finding out how they could apply their Python skills within the social sciences.
Feedback from the students after taking the course was also positive. They all reported being either ‘motivated’ or ‘highly motivated’ to complete the course. 75% of respondents felt that the course taught them skills or knowledge that they will be able to use their research, that the course quality was either ‘good’ or ‘very good’ and that they would recommend the courses to others.
Additionally, all of these students told us that they would like their institution to make other SAGE Campus courses available to them in the future. One student commented;
‘I am glad I can have more opportunities to learn with SAGE courses, either being a tester or formal user, especially for the topics I took this time of programming for social scientists.’
Want to find out how to get SAGE Campus for your institution or try it out? Find out more and demo Campus at our institution hub.