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.

[aryammanb]

Hello, Thank you for this course. I took up this course as a part of GCI and I found it very easy to understand. It is simple and made using very commonly used words. I had earlier never seen comparision of performance of various languages and thought it was cool. Since I am a relatviely new programmer, I learnt new concepts of Packages and Plotting and multiple dispatch in this course.

I would like to make following suggestions 1) Review after every topic for the student to know that he has understood the concept correctly. 2) In the beginning a brief explanation as to why Julia was invented and how it is better or more suitable. I understand it is faster but it comes much later in the course 3) I found the sound of the video very low.(I was not using earplugs)

Thank you once again. Regards Aryamman github : aryammanb gci:aryammanbhatia

[shresth2001]

Feedback on the Introduction to Julia Academy course-

1. The steps for the completion of the course were well-illustrated with images and every step required for the same was mentioned.
2. The course can be improved by providing the frequent errors that people make during the time of doing the course. By reading and understanding these errors, people will be able to prevent these errors from happening.
3. Considering that these courses somehow lead to the improvement of the users and supporting the community, the least that could be done is providing the users with online certificates mentioning the completion of the course. Thank you, Regards, Shresth Bindal. gci: Shresth2001

[dhs17y1hheziqi]

Hi, here is some feedback for the intro to Julia course:

Overall, I found it a fun and interesting experience, however, as a beginner programmer, there were some parts where the explanation was too fast and I got quite confused, hence to replay the portion several times to understand. I suggest breaking down the topics into smaller parts for beginners like myself to better understand. In addition, I feel that more reviews can be added so that we are able to test the knowledge of each course to fully help the student understand what is taught in the particular video so that he or she will not get confused further down the line when watching the following videos. Otherwise, it was a pleasant experience.

Thank you! gci: ziqi

[sc984]

Feedback on the "Introduction to Julia" course: I have learned other languages online, such as C and Javascript, online, and this course has topped the other ones due to the videos' explanations and visual information. However, an issue I faced whilst taking the course was the lack of quizzes or assessments which could help the user know the position they're in and how much more information they must learn in order to master topic. Albeit, I did feel that the review quiz had helped me know how much more I needed to study. Furthermore, the course should include pages for those who are not visual and auditory learners but are instead reading/writing learners so they can achieve their full potential whilst enjoying this course.

Thanks! gci: kayak

[NandVinchhi]

The Intro to Julia Academy was a fantastic course and I truly enjoyed it for the following reasons:

It was short, concise and to the point. It made the entire process smooth and easy.

Suggestive improvements:

Maybe add video tutorials on how to install nteract?

Also this course could be integrated with some other Julia course such as the "Introduction to Julia" course. I feel that it is far too short to be a course in itself.

[Aditya-Harsh]

The instructor truly knows how to explain and get the student to understand.Since it required no prior knowledge, I suggest it for complete beginners. Each step of the course was well-illustrated with images.He ensured the students are not just left scratching their head. However , the instructor has to add a section that express the basic differences in the new version of Julia I guess. The slides presented is not for the Windows operating system. The course uses the Apple operating system. The version of Julia used is an old version. The GUI is expected to be more interactive. Also , the learning experience would have been much better with video explanations , quizzes and assessments.

[sephorah]

The Getting Started With JuliaAcademy was very nice. I was actually kind of hyped to start Julia, and it was very clear and concise.

Also, I liked a lot the certificate, I didn't except this.

But, I mistook the Getting Started With JuliaAcademy for Introduction to Julia (maybe I was a little bit inattentive).

So, maybe you can try to add a special 'pack' for newcomers with Getting Started With JuliaAcademy and Introduction to Julia.

Thank you. gci : Seph

[MirzaSNR]

I think JuliaAcademy is good. Because Many are free. Open Source. And Much That We Used To Make Knowledge

[MirzaSNR]

JuliaAcademy There are still many shortcomings that must be addressed. One of them is that there are still many people who know the whereabouts of JuliaAcademy.

[jatin2003]

The "The Intro to JuliaAcademy" was really useful for one beginning with Julia. Some places of improvement are :-

1. There is an error on site i.e, course shows 0% even after completing whole course as mentioned by @soumitradev .
2. There should be PDF for installation guides in every lecture .
3. Some video tutorials can also be added to make it more interactive.
4. The Certificate of Completion have no signature.

[mqwangwa]

The course itself was easy to follow. I saw a few comments asking for videos, but I personally preferred the text-and-screenshot approach since I could read through it and go at my own pace rather than listening to a video (which is usually slower than reading) and having to frequently pause while waiting for something to start up or download. I had trouble with the authentication portion of Julia itself. When I tried to sign in through my google account, the authentication did not go through, despite setting both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge as the default browsers on my laptop and trying my home, school, and library Wi-Fi networks. When logging in through GitHub, I couldn't get the authorization to go through. The button was there, but it wasn't "clickable" for lack of a better term.

Other than that issue, the set up was easy with the course's clear instructions.

[mqwangwa]

Following the course, however, the website showed the course as only 50% completed. When I then clicked on the "Your Instructor" section, the website showed an 100% completion screen and offered me my course certificate. I also really liked the confetti screen at the end of the course.

[maxMurakami]

I thought overall the course of good and helped deepen my understanding. However, throughout the course I only had one quiz to test my understanding of the content. I would appreciate it if I had more of an opportunity to test myself on the content that I learned. Also I feel like it would be cool if I would interact with video. Like fro instance, the video would pause at one point and ask equation that I would have to answer. Also when I had a question regarding a certain topic, I had nowhere to ask but the internet. If there was a questions box or something I feel like that would be useful. Lastly I liked how I got a certificate at the end, it made me feel like I accomplished something. One last thing is, I found the Basic Linear algebra part confusing, I feel like it could be simplified.

[Tinymanager]

The overall course was good. The visuals along with the vocal explanation were very helpful to gain a better understanding of the content. If an example of the operations being used in a program was included along with the explanation it would allow for a much better understanding of how it can be used. If there was a question after each topic is explained or a quiz at the end of each video it would help to retain the information. It would be nice to have a quiz in the format of code so that you would have to create and use the information gained instead of just multiple-choice questions.

[maxMurakami]

I thought overall the course of good and helped deepen my understanding. However, throughout the course I only had one quiz to test my understanding of the content. I would appreciate it if I had more of an opportunity to test myself on the content that I learned. Also I feel like it would be cool if I would interact with video. Like fro instance, the video would pause at one point and ask equation that I would have to answer. Also when I had a question regarding a certain topic, I had nowhere to ask but the internet. If there was a questions box or something I feel like that would be useful. Lastly I liked how I got a certificate at the end, it made me feel like I accomplished something. One last thing is, I found the Basic Linear algebra part confusing, I feel like it could be simplified. I also think there was a technical error as I did not receive a certification of completion for "Foundations of Machine Learning." I also think it would have been useful to have a page where I could see all of m certificates fo accomplishments because after I closed the tab, the only way to view my certificate was by going through a link on my email.

[av1nDs0uza]

The lecture from miss Jane Herriman was fantastic but i would like to suggest that a set of questions could be added as practice questions for acquiring a clearer picture of julia . I would also like to suggest that at the end of the session a minor problem could be solved which coves the contents of that particular lecture. I would also like to suggest to provide some basic details and assume that there is a possibility that the person trying to learn julia might be learning programming for the first time

[kimttfung]

Hi! Just wanted to leave my thoughts on this course. "Getting Started With JuliaAcademy"

• From someone who has had a little bit more experience in Julia, I personally would not recommend the JuliaPro setup. It is very restrictive and could set the users on the wrong path later on in JuliaAcademy when it comes to Deep Learning with Flux. The setup doesn't work for Images.jl which is needed in Image Classification and becomes a problem. I myself thought JuliaPro was the best setup and had no other instructions as to how I could solve the problem when I ran the Jupyter Notebook files from that Deep Learning course as well as the plotting video in the Introduction to Julia course, where there was an error to do with WebIO not being able to work. The reason why I'm saying this is because I think it would be better to guide them through the normal installation, including adding the binary to PATH, and using Juno and IJulia, which IMO would set them up well for the JuliaAcademy courses later on, as this is in fact called, "Getting Started with JuliaAcademy"

• Several people here have already mentioned the 0% bug and I have the same problem as well.

• I noticed that the section for the Certificates have showed up for people who are new and just signed up recently after it was implemented but it's not giving me a certificate for me (I actually did this course around 3 months ago )

• Would be great if there could also be instructions to the installation of nteract for other platforms such as Linux, Windows, and more

• As this is the first stepping stone for many new Julia users, it would be great if the interface could be made to look slightly better so that the users can be attracted and would perhaps stay longer. I know someone in real life who have tried this course but found it pointless, but this was at least a year ago now. I think it might be better off if there could be some explanation as to why everyone should continue with JuliaAcademy and not stop there.

• A logo would be nice

• Would also be great if there could be a section explaining the installation errors.

• Perhaps slightly too short for it to be a course?

• Also I dislike how it says "FREE". It gives the impression that it could be charged soon.

Overall this is really nice. One side note:

• Maybe some of the improvements have already been implemented (I heard that something was implemented recently but I'm not too sure what it was exactly) but is not updated for previous students who have enrolled/completed the course before implementation. Eg. Certificates