By:  Ella Dennis

Exercism

Introduction:

This tool is an online platform to help proficient and new coders practice the act of programming via real-world challenges. Exercism provides over 50 programming languages and a mentorship system that is led by the coding community within the website. Users can do practice exercises that can start with base-level syntax and advance to complex algorithms. As these learners practice, they can get immediate feedback and assistance from mentors. Exercism works to build a learning community that allows users to submit solutions, get constructive feedback, and practice to improve.

A key point of Exercism is the focus on coding mentorship. Unlike other coding resources that focus on self-teaching through trial and error, Exercism makes sure to connect their users with experienced coders/developers who can look at and review their code to give advice or actionable steps to make it better. The timely and immediate feedback helps to support useful coding habits and offers areas for growth.

Exercism is specifically useful for individuals who prefer hands-on learning experiences rather than learning through lessons in theory. That being said, the mentorship aspect of the site is reliant on volunteers and this can change how long it may take to get assistance. Exercism is focused on learning by doing and this does not allow for the theory that some users may want when developing their coding knowledge. Overall, Exercism is an excellent tool for individuals who are looking to improve their coding abilities.

Working Process:

In a classroom, Exercism can be used as a tool to assist students with improving their skills in coding. Teachers can use it within a coding curriculum in order to offer hands-on practice with real-world coding issues they could face in the future. The following are some steps to guide teachers in its use:

Introduce the Platform — Show the students the platform. Show students the benefits of Exercism and how it works, assist them with setting up accounts and have them choose which coding language they want to practice with the most (you could also have them choose a specific coding language that fits the unit or curriculum).

Assign Specific Tasks — Assign the students with specific coding exercises available on the website. As the teacher you can track their progress on those exercises and offer guidance to help with the students’ completion of work.

Make use of the Mentorship — To offer assistance to students in areas that are beyond the teacher’s knowledge, encourage the students to make use of the mentorship available through the site. This can be made a requirement to show that students have made an effort to get feedback on their code. Teachers can also offer more guidance to help students understand the feedback or their errors.

Have the Students Collaborate — If the mentorship side of the site will not fit with the timeline you’re going for, have the students work together. This would be in an effort to practice peer-to-peer learning and seeking feedback to improve their work.

By working Exercism into the coding classroom, teachers who are not even well-versed in coding can offer their students a resource that offers personalized and practical coding assistance and practice. This tool can be used as a bridge between the theory taught in class and hands-on application.

Resource Information:

Tags: Exercism, Teaching, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Debugging, Testing, Python, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, C++, Code Optimization, Practice, Learner, Mentors

URL Link to Resource: https://exercism.org/

Costs: Exercism is completely free. All features, including their mentorship, coding exercises, and tracking progress are available at no cost. Though the resource is free, it does take donations if users want to contribute to keeping the site available and improving.