A free course that teaches non-programmers to write their own program, one line of code at a time, starts today on the Future Learn platform. The focus of the course is data analysis using real world datasets.

With the newly launched TechPrep and the preparations for this year's Hour of Code there are plenty of Learn to Code opportunities available. However for adult learners the problem is often that they don't start by providing a good rationale for acquiring this skill and fail to address the question "Why do I need to learn to code?".

Learn to Code for Data Analysis is a new 4-week course from the Open University that starts on October 26th and presents a very valid reason in its title. This is further explained in the course description:

This hands-on course will teach you how to write your own computer programs, one line of code at a time. You’ll learn how to access open data, clean it and analyse it and to produce visualisations. You will also learn how to write up and share your analyses, privately or publicly.

The computer language student will be introduced to is Python but rather than attempt to teach Python from scratch you are supplied with code to edit in a Jupyter notebook - this is the new name of what was initially known as the iPython notebook.

The course description states:

Each week of this hands-on course is organised around a small data analysis project. Throughout the week, we will introduce all programming and data analysis concepts needed for the project. You will use Jupyter notebooks to run the project’s code we give you and to write your own code, to solve exercises and write up your own analysis. Notebooks are also used to write up the data analysis, and you may share your own project notebooks publicly.

The data that students will to work with, all of which is open data, comes from the World Health Organisation, the World Bank and other organisations. 

This sounds like a well thought out approach to teaching non-programmers to understand and appreciate the power of coding and to have the satisfaction of writing some code of their own.

Like all courses on the Future Learn platform, Learn to Code for Data Analysis is free of charge. If you want one,you can purchase a Statement of Participation after course completion but this doesn't show your individual level of completion or your test scores.

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