From 0 to Robot: How to Teach Programming to Beginners

FIRST General Forum
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I presented about how I teach programming to beginners at the 2024 FIRST Mentor Conference in Mountainview, CA and was able to get my talk recorded.

You can watch the recording here and the slides are linked here.

I talk about the physical items you need, lessons I use, and the pedagogy (learning science) behind why it works. I share stories from my experiences and hopefully leave everyone with very actionable plans that they can implement.

This isn’t a lesson on how to program. Apparently that’s also in demand so feel free to link to your content :slight_smile:

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I have to say this presentation was one of the highlights of FMC for me. I would highly recommend watching it to anyone teaching FRC programming.

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Just finished watching the recording and this is truly an amazing presentation.

555 (and it’s code team) is currently entirely student-led. We make our own curriculums and teach them to 20~ incoming kids with knowledge levels ranging from “complete beginner” to “java expert”.

Constantly throughout the presentation I would go “why don’t we do that!” And “oooooh that’s way better than doing X”.

The idea that you teach Java in conjunction with Robotics is unfortunately not really prevalent in FMA. Most teams I know rely heavily on previous knowledge or long & tedious textbooks.

You did an amazing job on this presentation and i’m sure a lot of people (including myself) learned a lot from it.

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One of the best treatments of this topic I’ve seen. Emphasis is in the right places and the advice is well-tuned for the current controls landscape. Well-done.

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As I mentioned in the presentation, I also used to teach syntax first. I really only found out one can learn as they go by accident. I don’t fault anyone for starting with “how to code” first.

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Thank you for this. I had to cancel my trip to the conference, but I would have attended your session. This was invaluable.

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This presentation is fantastic, and I hope to incorporate many of these ideas into our training this year.

I’d also like to commend you on your slides - they’re a fantastic resource all on their own; mine end up being more of a visual aid than a content delivery mechanism.

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Thanks (to you and to everyone saying kind things)!

I wanted the slides to be a one-stop-shop that would both help me remember the content of my presentation as well as something for folks to refer back to. I think I broke all the rules of good slide design aiming to meet both goals :wink:

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