topic: Intro to foundational coding course

Congrats! You made it into the foundational coding course.

Getting through the full Umuzi program is pretty hard. We made this course so that we can make sure we can set as many people up for success as possible. The worst thing we can do is accept someone into our course when they aren’t quite ready for it because if a person is not quite work-ready by the end then it’s a waste of a year and stressful and horrible for everyone involved.

The idea behind this course is to allow you to polish up a few skills that are required to pass our selection Bootcamp. We also want to help you learn how to learn more effectively and add a little shine to some of your so-called “soft” skills. Soft skills are hard you guys!

You can learn how to learn better. Being an effective learner will supercharge your whole life.

How to be successful

The first thing to know is that you’ll have a bunch of cards on your Tilde boards. You need to deal with those cards in the usual way.

Make sure you read everything properly and focus on understanding.

How the assessments work

If you look around your board, you’ll notice a few Assessment cards. These are really important.

If you have 3 assessment cards and 3 months to do them in then that is one a month.

If you fail an assessment then it’s ok! We’ll let you try again. You will need to wait at least a week before retrying the assessment.

If you have an assessment scheduled and you can’t attend then you must communicate about it ahead of time so that it can be rescheduled. We will count no-shows as failures. The same would be true for exams in any higher education institution.

FOCUS NOW

Understanding is CRITICAL!!!

If you manage to get all your Tilde cards into the Complete column and one of our staff members talks to you and it turns out that you don’t understand the code that you submitted then that will cause problems. Please only submit work that you understand.

This is not a race, there is no prize for the person who finishes first.

If you can UNDERSTAND all the stuff covered in this course then you’re golden. Even if that means you move your cards slowly.

Make sure you read everything properly.

If you submitted work during the Bootcamp and you didn’t 100% understand it, then please go back and revisit that stuff. Re-do the tutorials, practise as much as you need to, and make sure you master the material. You should be able to do the projects yourself!

As a professional technologist you will be asked to do way harder stuff, if you want a career in tech, then master the material.

It’s our job to make content that helps you understand

That means that if anything is ambiguous or confusing, we need to sort things out so that it makes sense.

We won’t be spoonfeeding you though. We want to turn you into a professional. Professionals overcome problems and seek understanding. So if you ask a question that you should be able to figure out on your own, we might tell you to go figure it out. Don’t take it personally.

Seeking understanding is like a gym for your brain.

This is self-paced learning

Cast your mind back to when you were in school. If you went to a normal school then you would have been in a class of kids who were all forced to work at the same pace. This was really bad for a lot of people.

Many of the “faster” kids were stunted and bored instead of stretched. Growth opportunities were lost. Many of the “slower” kids just gave up and decided that they were incapable. A lot of potential simply got thrown away.

Now, this is a remote course. Different people doing our course have different interests, aspirations and home lives. We believe that making everyone work in lockstep would be a silly thing to do. So you get to work at your own pace.

We do, however, have standards: We do have some minimum “pace” requirements you’ll need to meet. Otherwise, you just won’t learn enough to gain a useful set of skills. If your pace is too slow, we will let you know.

Try to build good habits

If you are juggling another job or other responsibilities then we strongly encourage you to come up with a schedule so that you can work on your course regularly.

  • you could spend an hour or two on this course before or after work;
  • you could dedicate your weekends to working on this;
  • you could reach out to a colleague and get them to help keep you accountable to your own goals.

Please, for your own good, build good habits.

Your target

You have a lot of cards on your board. We need you to get the following into the “COMPLETE” column:

Everything up to and including the first three Assessment cards. When you move an assessment card into the “review” column then you’re basically asking to be tested. If you UNDERSTAND all the code you wrote and all the concepts covered then you’ll do fine in the tests.

Please make sure you read the assessment cards before asking for assessments.

Danger zone

If we catch anyone cheating we will, unfortunately, need to permanently remove that person from our program.

What is cheating?

If you submit code that you wouldn’t be able to write on your own then that would be considered cheating. You can look things up while coding, but just copy-pasting off the internet is really not ok at all.

You can ask people to help you understand, but all the code you submit should be completely written and understood by you.

If we give you a test to write and the answers are copied from the internet or you have someone else write your test for you then that’s cheating.

You will only be considered to have passed this course if you provably understand all the concepts covered.

One thing to note is that we really are rooting for you. We won’t try to catch you out with trick questions or anything like that. We are looking for competence.

Meetings

From time to time you’ll be invited to take part in live discussions. These will happen on Google Meet or Streamyard. Here’s what you need to know:

  1. You need to watch your inbox to make sure you don’t miss any invitations.
  2. When you get an invitation you need to respond to it. Say “yes” if you can make it, “no” if you can’t. If you can’t make it then let us know why so we can reschedule.
  3. Be on time. Set an alarm and try to be a few minutes early so that nothing goes wrong.
  4. Make sure you are somewhere with good internet and electricity. It’s your professional responsibility to be present. For example, If you have load shedding you need to find a place where you can work from.
  5. You’ll need a working microphone so you can participate in the discussion.
  6. Try to join on an actual computer if you can. There will generally be a screen share going on and you’ll need to be able to read the code that is displayed.
  7. These sessions are often recorded for quality and training purposes - our staff members review and critique each other’s sessions. This makes everyone better.

The end

That’s it! Good luck :)


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