Online Beginner Scratch Coding and the Engineering Design Process

Dates: Sundays, Feb 18 – May 5, 2024, 9:30am-10:30am EST
Location: Online

This 12-week class will enable students to learn basic skills in MIT’s Scratch coding program. This course is intended for students who have never used Scratch before!

In this course, students will be learning basic coding in MIT’s Scratch platform (https://scratch.mit.edu/) while also learning about the iterative engineering design process. This process involves identifying the problem, brainstorming solutions, prototyping, testing solutions and critiquing them. Students will be able to put their ‘engineering hard hats’ on to think systematically, logically and consider a variety of factors when choosing design solutions for their Scratch project.

Each couple of weeks, students will learn to use and experiment with new elements on the Scratch interface. Each lesson will involve a tutorial of the element used, experimentation and a mini-project applying these elements. After each live lesson, students will receive a homework sheet with practice and challenge questions to enhance their coding skills. The schedule for each week is as follows:

Week 1-2 – Sprites & Costumes [Project: a self-portrait]
Week 3-4 – Backdrops [Project: story-telling]
Week 5-6 – Motions [Project: virtual interactive zoo]
Week 7-8 – Sensing [Project: simple catch game]
Week 9-10 – Variables [Project: soccer game]
Week 11-12 – Extensions – pen tool [Project: coding art]

My role in this class will be to enable students to apply their creativity in a productive way – while also learning key skills in design thinking, such as brainstorming, prototyping and communicating design solutions. In addition, as an engineer, I will take a small portion of the class to discuss potential career options in engineering – and where engineering design would be applied in these career options.

**Note: This class is for beginners who have little or no in-class experience with Scratch. For intermediate and advanced classes, please check out my other courses.**

Students will learn how to code using Scratch.
Students will learn and apply the engineering design process.