Computing education: the importance of text-based coding

Lucy Gill at Micro:bit Educational Foundation argues that to bridge the digital skills gap we need promote text-based coding

 

Computing education is a business issue. The UK loses out on £6.3 billion a year in GDP due to unfilled job vacancies from lack of technical skills. In a tough economy, this is pinching more than ever.

 

While incremental progress is being made to encourage more people to enter tech careers, there’s still a long way to go to build the skilled workforce the UK needs to remain competitive on a global scale.

 

Text-based programming languages like Python and Java are by far top of employers’ wish lists. A quick search on any job site can attest to the size of the demand. But to date, there’s been numerous barriers that inhibit learning these languages and taking these skills into a career.

 

There are several challenges at play here that we need to unravel if we’re to truly address the digital skills gap and make the changes needed to transform how we teach these skills.

 

Text-based coding: important – but perceived as difficult

Python is the most widely used and fastest growing developer language in the world. It and other text-based languages have a broad application of uses, from powering machine learning to web development and data analytics.

 

Text-based languages can power a huge number of potential use cases and problem solving. This is why they are so valuable. They are behind most of the applications you interact in your daily lives and are immensely powerful.  

 

The UK secondary school curriculum introduced learning text-based languages in 2014, but to date teachers and students alike have struggled to include languages like Python, given the jump in technical complexity. Instead the focus has largely been around HTML.

 

Text-based languages are especially tricky. They require a relatively high reading level ability; are easy to get wrong and create error messages; and editors usually start with a ‘blank screen’, leaving new learners feeling unsure of how to get started, overwhelmed and demotivated.  

 

The digital diversity gap

The challenges of learning text-based coding apply to all students, but it’s important we also examine how these challenges intersect with existing diversity issues.

 

The tech industry’s diversity challenges are well documented. Just last month, a new report found young workers in tech from diverse backgrounds are struggling, not with the nature of the work, but the environment. Nearly half felt uncomfortable in a job because of their gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, or neurodevelopmental condition.

 

This same logic can be applied when we consider computing education at schools. For example, while overall numbers taking Computing A-Level increased this year, it continued to have the biggest gender imbalance of all subjects, with 82% of students being male.

 

This isn’t for lack of ability or enjoyment in the work, though. Girls generally outperform boys when they do take computing, and our experience shows they enjoy it too.

 

What is at play is a cultural issue. Computing is held back by social stereotypes and attitudes, even among female teachers, that don’t encourage girls to pick computing.

 

While moving the cultural needle will take time, what can change today is how computing is taught to make it feel more accessible and engaging for these underrepresented groups.

 

Stepping up to text-based programming

It’s important we scrutinise the computing resources, hardware and software used in classrooms to ensure they’re accessible, inclusive, and fun for all children. This is especially so when considering highly desirable skills like text-based programming.  

 

Micro:bit Educational Foundation has a unique position in its long-term grassroots mission. It has insights from its business partners – tech giants like Arm and Microsoft , from teachers, and from its young users. It helps promote diversity in computing education with its handheld coding device, the BBC micro:bit, which is designed and shared with teacher-friendly resources.

 

From years of experience and with over six million devices in use globally, it has been able to draw on a broad scope of insights and data to redefine how we teach text-based programming. The result has been to make it feel both like a smaller step up for beginners, and to make it feel more accessible to a broader scope of users.  

 

Here are some of the ways that the organisation is helping to make text-based programming simpler with its new Python Editor:

• Minimising literacy and typing barriers by introducing ‘drag and drop’ code snippets and autocomplete
• Easing the fear of starting from a blank screen by incorporating working starter code and examples
• Supporting trial and error learning by highlighting and explaining errors as you code
• Making code come to life by pairing with a physical computer - something that we’ve seen hugely boosts engagement among girls and diverse groups
• Making the interface more user-friendly and appealing with a lighter screen and code structure highlighting – again, purpose-designed with underrepresented learners in mind

Great resources need to go hand-in-hand with more teacher support too. Teaching is a female-dominated profession, and while many are already setting brilliant role models in classrooms, we need to ensure that they are given adequate tools to deliver these skills and to foster excitement around computing from a young age.  

 

Bridging the digital diversity gap at a grassroots level

Just a few months ago, big tech in the US like Amazon, Apple and Google signed an open letter calling on the government to give computing more importance in the schooling agenda. It is, they say, ‘a core subject, just like basic biology or algebra’.

 

From speaking with our tech company partners, the sentiments of the UK tech world are very similar. This underscores how important the link between education and the workplace is.  

 

The UK may be ahead of the US in that there is space already in the curriculum for learning to code. But it’s clear there’s still much progress still to be made to help businesses plug skills gaps and to improve diversity.

 

We need to go back to grassroots when thinking about tech skills. We must rethink and improve how we teach these most valuable skills to the youth of today. Getting the widest group possible engaged will be the most powerful thing we can do for British business tomorrow.

 

---

 

Lucy Gill is a Product Manager at Micro:bit Educational Foundation

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com