22.06.23

2 generations of coders: the Coding Club coaching programme

This year, Girls' Coding Club launched a new programme aimed at its most committed members. At the beginning of the year, girls who had taken part in nine or more Girls' Coding Club workshops were invited to join Coding Club Coaching.

The aim of this programme is to give motivated girls the opportunity to go further and carry out a personal IT project. Coding Club Coaching participants are supervised and accompanied by EPFL students – their coaches – who share with them not only their technical knowledge but also their experience as women engineers training at EPFL.

Ten members of the Girls’ Coding Club carried out personal projects on their own or in pairs. They worked on their ideas and codes for three months – from 1 March until 10 June 2023, when their projects were exhibited at the Swiss Coding Club Meet-up at EPFL.

During these three months, the girls met regularly with their online and face-to-face coachees to discuss their projects and find out about the day-to-day life of a student at EPFL. These meetings took place at least once a month. What’s more, in April, the girls and their coaches met up on the EPFL campus, where they were able to visit the students’ laboratories and workplaces.

© Muriel Gerber - 2023 EPFL

At the beginning of June, all the projects were presented to the public at the Swiss Coding Club Meet-up. The girls from Coding Club Coaching who attended the event were visibly proud to see their final project on display in the hall of the SG Building in front of more than 300 people. The eight projects, explained on posters, could be tested on computers. They attracted a great deal of attention from visitors and were much appreciated.

The projects included HTML programmes, such as a biography of Agatha Christie in the form of an interactive book, a multiple-choice general knowledge quiz and a site for practising English vocabulary. There are also Scratch projects, such as adventure video games like “Pac-Man”, as well as an informative and fun project on sustainable development goals. One of the participants has created a ‘face filter’ using Scratch Lab, while another has embarked on programming a video game from a ‘first-person’ perspective using the ‘Unity’ platform.

We would like to congratulate our ten members, who have worked hard on their programmes and produced some wonderful and interesting computer projects. We are very proud of them and their projects.

The next edition of this programme will take place in spring 2024. The criteria for participation will be defined in winter 2023/24. All members who meet the criteria will be invited in early 2024.