1. 1
Recap and Feedback from our 1st Code School

2. 2
What was it?
• Internal code school for beginners
• Intended to teach non-programmers how to use our
Jama API and write simple code for it.
• We taught two sessions:
– Session 1: Intro to Programming with Python
– Session 2: Using Jama’s API
• About 15-20 attendees from all over the company.

3. 3
The idea
• This came up in our ideation space and I was recruited
by Jamey to host it.
• 25 sign-ups in Jive

4. 4
The Setup
• Two sessions were scheduled.
• 90 minutes each
• Recruited 2 TA’s from engineering:
– They hovered in the back of the class and swooped in to help
whenever someone was having a hard time.
– This let me concentrate on teaching the class while the TA’s
were able to get through issues specific to the student.
• Session 1 was largely based on Automate The Boring
Stuff with Python.
• Session 2 was based on our Jama API and everything
you’d need to know to understand it.

5. 5
What did we teach?
• Started with examples in Python Interpreter and moved
to writing in Sublime Text
• Session 1:
– Print statements
– Variables
– Booleans
– If/Then/Else
– While loops
– Comments
– Functions
• Assignment: Tip calculator

6. 6
What did we teach?
• Session 2:
– How to search for answers (google-fu)
– Importing 3rd party modules
– HTTP
– Requests module
– What is a REST API?
– Jama’s REST API
– Swagger documentation
• Assignment: Create and relate items in Jama with a
script.

7. 7
Results
• I sent a Survey out to
see how people liked
the class.
• About 20 in the first
class
• 15 in the second class
• Only a few had never
tried programming
before.
• Several watched the
classes online as
recordings.
• Several more tried the
assignments outside of
the class.

8. 8
Results

9. 9
Results

10. 10
Results

11. 11
Results

12. 12
Results

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Results

14. 14
Results

15. 15
Feedback from the class
• “The material was all brand new, but it was helpful to
have the TAs on hand to assist when something would
go wrong.”
• “Having TAs was a huge help”
• “I had a really great time and feel like I better understand
the work you guys do, even if we only scratched the
very, very, very surface.”
• “It would be great to see more types of coding examples,
C++, Java Script, Java, etc, etc.”
• “Code School 3 and 4!”