Thread about potential improvements for Intro to Julia Academy course

[logankilpatrick]

Thread started during Google Code-In about how to improve the Intro to JuliaAcademy course.

[yuvrajsrn]

The overall course was good but some more efforts can be made such as quiz ,etc . I mean to say that more interaction with users is needed.

[YashasMessi02]

It was indeed good. I could understand the concept. But it could've been more better, i think. It could be a way more interesting.

[NoorHasanShaik86]

The course is good . We could understand it easily. But the course should contain some more like quizzes etc., and the course should contain real life examples also.

[soumitradev]

In my opinion, as far as this course goes, not much interaction is required since the course only gives a walkthrough of the installation process.

The installation process is well illustrated with screenshots and a clear explanation. However, I have noticed some things that may need improvement:

• The course doesn’t have a cover graphic like the other courses. Maybe that can be a new Design task?
• The website for some reason shows 0% complete in the Course Curriculum section even though all the course content is marked complete. On clicking on the “Your Instructor” section, the website shows the correct percentage but goes back to 0% after heading back to the course curriculum. (screenshot included) Maybe this is some JS bug?
• As an improvement, maybe the course could include some common errors the user might run into and how to fix them?
• One more thing I noticed is that while the instructions after downloading “nteract” are fairly straightforward on Windows and Linux, the instructions in the course only include macOS, and lack any mention of other OSes.

Screenshots of website bug I mentioned:

[gunturajip]

According to the Julia Academy performance, i think it's been great in general, but the speed for the current slide to move to the next slide when i click on is slightly slow, and for a while i'm confused whether it will be moved to the next page or not, and actually it just move to another slide like powerpoint.

[gunturajip]

That occured both on desktop and android, but on android it doesn give a certain sign to the next slide but i often click on it multiple times as i'm confused why it doesn't move to the next slide immediately.

[gunturajip]

The second thing is -> I think the overall course curriculum for especially learning the basic of julia pro.lang. is nicely set up, but it may can be more nice if the developers add an isntant julia code playground on each stage of couse so that all learners instantly learn what they've understood on the website without opening their own julia pro.lang. editor

[gunturajip]

The third thing is -> you know for most of an adult or even and old people, when they learn something, they of course want to learn that without any kind of gift that maybe can give them some addition spirit for continuing their learning but, for most of children, when someone appreciate them with some kind of gift for example : digital completion certificate, or something related to the learning purpose of Julia pro.lang, i think it can be more interesting to learn it (Julia pro.lang)

[Aaron-glitch-ass]

I've just completed the course but I noticed one flaw in the authentication section. Two authentications have been submitted by me (through my Github and email account) but the Julia Pro server takes a long time to respond.

[Aaron-glitch-ass]

I want to commend that the JuliaAcademy's instructions are straight forward and user-friendly. Keep it up!

[gunturajip]

Hi, it will be better if you also tell the mentor about the problem, thank you.

On Dec 29, 2019 10:37 PM, "AARON LIM HONG RONG" notifications@github.com wrote:

I've just completed the course but I noticed one flaw in the authentication section. Two authentications have been submitted by me (through my Github and email account) but the Julia Pro server takes a long time to respond.

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[Aaron-glitch-ass]

Hi, it will be better if you also tell the mentor about the problem, thank you. … On Dec 29, 2019 10:37 PM, "AARON LIM HONG RONG" @.***> wrote: I've just completed the course but I noticed one flaw in the authentication section. Two authentications have been submitted by me (through my Github and email account) but the Julia Pro server takes a long time to respond.

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that's a good idea

[yuvrajsrn]

The overall course is good but can be improved. The installation process is well illustrated with screenshots and a clear explanation.

According to the Julia Academy performance, i think it's been great in general, but the speed for the current slide to move to the next slide when i click on is slightly slow, and for a while i'm confused whether it will be moved to the next page or not, and actually it just move to another slide like powerpoint.

The course is good . We could understand it easily. But the course should contain some more like quizzes etc., and the course should contain real life examples also.

At last, more interaction with users is required.

[yuvrajsrn]

The structure of the course is easy to understand but can be improved. First of all, the video can be more detailed. Secondly, for the installation process a video explanation is also required. Thirdly, The profile option is not working properly on mobiles.This should be improved. At last, more interaction with users is required.

[gunturajip]

nice

[gunturajip]

Hoping Julia Academy can be more greater day by day

On Dec 30, 2019 9:11 AM, "White Gap" gunturaji852@gmail.com wrote:

Yes, sir, thanks for the advices

On Dec 30, 2019 9:02 AM, "Yuvraj Saran" notifications@github.com wrote:

The structure of the course is easy to understand but can be improved. First of all, the video can be more detailed. Secondly, for the installation process a video explanation is also required. Thirdly, The profile option is not working properly on mobiles.This should be improved. At last, more interaction with users is required. [image: Screenshot_20191230-073001] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/59331482/71565608-570c1900-2ad6-11ea-8bf1-e7d760e2fae8.png

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[YashasMessi02]

It was all good. It could've been more attractive like you can add more quizzes and final summary with some reading material. That's what I meant by saying"it could've been more better".

[mikolajhojda]

I like that the course is in text form. It is easier for me to learn. I think you should add a logo to this course.

This button doesn't work or I don't know how to use it.

[soumitradev]

@mikolajhojda The button is for when you are not done with the course. On clicking, it plays the next unplayed lecture. Since you're done with the course, there is no next lecture, and the button is disabled.

[mikolajhojda]

@soumitradev Maybe the button should hide when I done with the course.

[soumitradev]

@mikolajhojda Yeah, that could be an improvement!

[nimtara]

A good site for learners. Can get to know about many courses. It is easy to get a clear idea about the installing process through screenshots and it is very helpful. Moreover, many computing languages which are useful to interact with technological site of present world, can be learnt through this academy for free of charge. The Julia Academy is a good site for youth. In addition, this site gives us every detail step by step therefore it is so convenient. On the other hand I prefer if the cause contains some interesting projects such as quiz competitions to make the user more interactive and enthusiastic. I enjoy the Julia Academy. Great work!

[josobar]

This is a good course to get started, and it is straight to the point. Overall, I think it is very helpful towards new Julia users, including myself.

Some suggestions:

1. In the "My Courses" list, it is displayed that 0% of the course is completed, despite the total completion of the course. This is the same problem that @soumitradev has mentioned.
2. If a user wants to use different tools other than nteract and JuliaPro, maybe offer some alternative IDEs and links to other tutorials?
3. At the end of the course, perhaps link a thread discussing installation errors and tell users that they can post any questions or problems that they are having with installation there.

[VijaySolaraju]

This is a good course for the beginners,it is very easy to understand. It is better to add assignments after every lecture and there should be a comment box or a chat box to communicate with mentors for asking

[sbhavyasivaraj]

Julia academy is a very good initiative for the people who wish to learn a new programming language. The intro is great and guides in the installation process. It has given a step by step process which is really very easy for the users to install and work on it. It consumes less time on the installation process and it also guides them as to how to use it. If there could be an improvement, it is that just like the other lectures in the academy, it would have been better if an instructor had explained as to how it is installed and can be displayed as videos in his/her screens because it is not clearly put up in words. The intro can be made more interesting because one will more eagerly participate is the process if attractive. I have attached a step from the intro to Julia academy. This is a personal feedback and I experienced it not to be clearly written. Step 2. Start the package manager. Click on that bottom left REPL pane and do as it says: hit enter (or return) to start Julia. You'll see a green julia> prompt pop up where you can start executing Julia code. You can of course also start using JuliaPro as a full-fledged IDE, but all we want to do here, though, is to initiate a connection with the package manager. To do that, type a ] at the prompt. This will "change modes" into the package management mode: I could not understand whether I had to type ‘a]’ or was it just ‘]’. It could have been enclosed in quotes : type a ‘]’ or shown with example julia> ] The above step was unclear when I used Julia for the first time. Some steps can be taken by the academy for small improvements like this.

[CompSciDZ]

Overall, the Introduction to Julia Academy is well implemented and the directions given are clear, concise, and get right to the point. I had no trouble following the directions to ensure that Iset everything up properly.

I had an issue with authenticating, but I quickly got that fixed and I am pretty sure that was a result of my computer being slow.

I also had an issue with opening a Jupyter Notebook on Nteract and had a message saying that there were no kernels installed. I used this to help me: https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl

Overall, the course was well executed and explained with step-by-step directions at every part. I don't see the need for quizzes because it is more of a guided process instead of a teaching course. The addition of an installation video would also be nice.

[TheComputerM]

Julia Academy is a great resource for beginners and the course aids in getting familiar with the Julia Academy interface and the language itself. It certainly helps in setting up Julia on the user's computer and introducing the beginner to the language. Some features could be added to make it even better. The steps are a little vague so the division of the steps and addition of video tutorials would certainly aid. The introduction could be more elaborate, talking about the advantages and features of Julia. The end feels a little incomplete so there could be more about how to edit and use notebooks. The addition of images definitely allows the beginner to easily follow through he tutorial. The introduction to Julia Academy is a great way to teach and introduce beginners to the language and the Julia Academy interface.

[metalchesshead]

I think there should be more reviews after each topic is covered. For example, after have a review about all the topics in control flow after the user completes that. Another thing that I think would be good would be good is having a reference pdf summarizing everything covered in the course for the user.

[Hry789]

Anyway it quite a good course,just maybe the speed of the mentor could be more louder and subtittle may be added.As some people may not understand well,exercise or comment could be added.

The progress of participants can be evaluated during the course through their participation in workshops, practical exercises and the discussion sessions where each module would be discussed before proceeding to the next stage of the course. Depending on the length of the course and the specific objectives, a more exhaustive evaluation process could be initiated. This would be possible in the training courses extending over a week or just putting the course to various parts.

This course provided an introduction to studying Julia language. It took you through a series of video designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance, and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.

[mdvsh]

This Introduction to JuliaAcademy Course, as its name suggests, was meant to get people up and running Julia on their computers along with their IDE, the JuliaPro and nTeract (a notebook viewer.) The course is a level 0 starter to the many amazing courses on JuliaAcademy.

Pros

• Clear, concise, easy to follow instructions.
• Accomplishes the task of setting the environment for other videos.
• The screenshots are aesthetically pleasing. I'm sure screely has been used to create those awesome shadow effects on the screenshots.

Places of Improvement

• As @soumitradev mentioned, the course lacks a graphic on the dashboard. However, I didn't experience that course completion percentage bug.
• The course could benefit from a disqus chat/comment form being added to it. People shouldn't have errors/doubts in the installation process itself right ? 😄
• Also, I don't like the idea of using nteract. It just doesn't seem an ideal coding platform. It is however a good app for reading ipynb(s). But Jupyter Notebook stands hands-down as the best Notebook editor today.
• P.S: In the deep learning course, the instructor himself writes code and documentation in Jupyter 😀

I guess that's it. Also, I think that a DARK MODE for the platform would be really nice to have.

Also, unpopular (personal opinion). JuliaPro sucks. It's slow and I'd not recommend it for making a project. Go Jupyter or VS Code. (or even the Julia Shell) but not JuliaPro. Thanks

Here's my screenshot.

[rcalitlk]

(altlk) Personally, I liked the course. It was basic and clear. No unnecessary time was spent on anything, and it was quite time-saving. However, I believe that if there was a video tutorial it could be better. In addition, even though all the steps are the same for all the environments, it could be beneficial to have different tutorials for different operating systems. Nevertheless, as I said, it was clear and helpful.

[kchatr]

I enjoyed the course and felt that it covered the essential foundations of the Julia programming language. The overall UI and UX are well-designed, thoughtful, and intuitive. I like the minimalistic design of the site and the pragmatic look and feel to the course.

Maneuvering the courseware was no issue and returning to my current point was fast and efficient. I do wish that there were captions, however, not because it was difficult to hear or understand, but because reading allows viewing the course in a more flexible manner.

I do, however, wish that it went into a little more detail about the benefits and vast uses of Julia, as well as what its primary goal as a language is. Also comparing and contrasting it to Python, a very similar language syntactically, would be helpful.

The course material is well designed and is structured in a logical and easy-to-follow manner, but I feel it could go a little deeper into the content. It is great at providing a solid base, but I don't feel it goes into enough depth or breadth for one to use it for data analytics and advanced mathematics. Going further into the implications and applications of mutating and broadcasting functions, the ternary operator, and other more advanced topics would be educational and helpful.

It would also be helpful to cover the topics with a holistic view. For instance, explaining the range notation and how you can state the magnitude of the steps (0 : 2 : 10 - generates all even numbers from 0-10 inclusive). Also, for the plotting section there was very little information on how to structure a plot, as well as what exactly plot and scatter! do. At times, the material can feel a little rushed and overfitted.

Also, they talk about the '!' used in functions after the quiz (see screenshot), so it does not make sense testing content that has not been covered and is open to interpretation.

There should also be more quizzes and assessments after the completion of a module or lesson, similar to Coursera's model.

[chinglamchoi]

It's already very detailed and easy to follow, but perhaps adding a video of the installation process would make it even clearer.

Perhaps the installation and activation process could be segmented into 3 parts for the 3 main operating systems. This is especially true for interact, where the course only covers installation procedures for MacOS.

[ghost]

Generally i loved to learn 😇 Julia it was interesting language but similar to python if you python it would be easier . coming to the tutorial video were small and audio quality was low there was only one question secession and it wasn't interactive . It's didn't have any codeing secession too

[ShridharSinha]

The course was overall a good experience: I feel like more practice should have been included the syntax and logic of the language was explained well a good variety of topics was covered perhaps a project could have been included

[Anikamittal23]

Julia language helps people to learn new language.This Introduction to JuliaAcademy Course, as its name suggests, was meant to get people up and running Julia on their computers along with their IDE, the JuliaPro and nTeract The course is a level 0 starter to the many amazing courses on JuliaAcademy.

THE THING I FEEL IT SHOULD IMPROVE IS:-

• it should contain a pdf so that people find it more easy.
• videos should be included so that it helps to learn more easily -their was an error after doing the cource

[ishaqbaig]

I found the language similar to python. The Lectures were good it is good course for the beginners, it is very easy to understand. Had little difficulty with the Factorization chapter

[PriyanshuSahani]

1. It's commendable that the topics are explained in an efficient way.
2. But there is more to it than just being efficient. The tutorial crammed me with knowledge about the keywords and syntax but didn't teach about uses (i.e. shallow & not very intriguing).
3. The tutorial featured keyword that I didn't know of and was just used in the 'for loop' lesson. (see screenshot). I had no clue about the 'zeroes' keyword.
4. The intro was not as arousing as it could have been. It could cover fewer topics but a little deeper so as to make someone want to learn more and more about it. "Still it did teach me many interesting things about Julia and I look forward to learning more."

[aftex261]

Hi everyone, Places of improvement:- 1.There should be PDF for installation guides in every lecture . 2.The lecture is too short.There must be some video lectures. 3.There is an error on the site showing 0% completed on the course even after I completed the course 100%. 4.No major difference between the nteract and jupyter notebook was given. 5.There can be more explanation given to the foundations of machine learning.

[PriyanshuSahani]

You should tap on the complete and next option after completing one tutorial.

On Fri, 3 Jan 2020, 01:09 aftex261 <notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi everyone, Places of improvement:- 1.There should be PDF for installation guides in every lecture . 2.The lecture is too short.There must be some video lectures. 3.There is an error on the site showing 0% completed on the course even after /i completed the course 100%. 4.No major difference between the nteract and jupyter notebook was given. 5.There can be more explanation given to the foundations of machine learning.

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[ishaqbaig]

It took me much time to understand transposition and LU we can improve this by giving more examples to make it understand more clearly

[Redeem-Grimm-Satoshi]

The getting started with Julia Academy Course was a great one, i liked the simplicity and was easy to follow especially for newbies getting started with the language for the first time. But still i had some little issues which if fixed may improve user experience.

First Issue:

There wasn't an explanation why JuliaPro was preferred over the normal Julia IDE(Julia v1.3) and i was confused at that point. I think if features are explained why they're being preferred over the other then it will be of great help

Second Issue

Even though the course was simplified to its maximum but it was still incomplete for me, i was expecting it to me more interactive when getting closer to the end. Inter activeness is what engage us the users. if course is more interactive then more users will be engaged.

[ishaqbaig]

Examples of transposition and LU that would make it understand more clearly

[hanzhangshen03]

Really a good course for learning Julia.

[Delta456]

The course was very well explained and easy to understand and I learned more about Julia.

You can also link up some other IDE in Julia Pro tutorial and have the tutorials to be downloadable that is videos so that we can view it offline. Machine Learning with Flux must not link to YouTube links IMO. Parallel Computing was easy to understand and explained a lot of concepts to me. Introduction to Julia was well explained too.

Overall the courses were really good.

[ishaqbaig]

To explaning transposition more effectively more examples are needed same as that of LU examples based on A'etc

[hanzhangshen03]

It is really a useful course for us to learn about Julia. I hope that more details can be provided in the course as the content is a little basic for us. But in all, the course is good-designed and really helpful for us.

[hanzhangshen03]

Generally it is a good course for learning Julia. However, there are also some problems. Firstly, the video can have more details about the functions, for example, when to use them and whether there is an alternative ways of doing this. Secondly, this introduction is a little simple for us. I hope more content can be added into the course so that we can learn more about Julia. Thirdly, there are very few chances for the students to interact with the teachers. If the interaction is improved, I think students can learn better.

[ankolaver]

The courses are generally good for learning Julia. For the Introduction to Julia Academy course, it was generally pretty clear, but perhaps maybe it could have a video for easier understanding, as screenshots may be straightforward. For other courses, the main feedback for the Intro to Julia course was as follows.

1. Maybe there could have been more exercises to test for understanding of the concepts
2. While i understand that the @assert function was to check if the answer was correct, maybe it could have been explained in the video
3. Lastly, maybe subtitles for the video would be helpful for watching the tutorial in noisy places

[Anikamittal23]

I really enjoyed the cource and found it helpful but i think their should be more exercies ,i was not able to understand few topics clearly, voice was low so i used earphones