Casimir programing course instructions#

Instructions for participants#

You will receive help from a mentor who will guide you through the course material, answer your questions and give you feedback about your code. During the course, we use a forum to keep everyone connected and share the official course’s information. We expect you to use the forum to connect with others and work together with at least one other participant.

How do I start?#

To register, you need to

  1. Sign up to the Kavli forum.

  2. Sign in to the forum and request access to the Casimir Programming Course group.

  3. Ask around in your lab or at a coffee discussion if anyone else wants to take a course, and if a more experienced colleague wants to be a mentor.

  4. If you cannot find a mentor that is nearby, use the forum’s list of mentors to contact one.

  5. Find at least one other participant to work with.

  6. Discuss with your teammates what you want to do as a final project.

  7. Introduce your team in a new topic in the forum.

Once your team is registered, you will get access to the course cloud computational environment to start coding.

Choosing a project#

Your final project should be something where you can make progress with your teammates in a couple of days. The best project is something that addresses your actual research needs; that way, it will definitely be useful, and you will probably have a rough idea where to start. You do not need to finish the project during the course, but try to find something where you can make progress. If you cannot find an own idea or would like some inspiration, we have also prepared some project ideas for you to get inspired, take a look here.

Finishing the course#

To finish the course you must:

  • Complete the course material which is divided in 4 modules. It is not necessary to finish the suggested exercises after each module.

  • Decribe what you achieved in your project in a forum post about it. Please explain what the goal was, what the plan was and where you arrived. Illustrate your results with images, code snippets, or anything else that you find relevant.

  • After you submit the forum post, the course team will arrange the certificate from the Casimir graduate school.

Asking for help#

During the course, the role of your mentor is to answer your questions and guide you through the course materials. If your mentor does not know the answer, you are also welcome to ask for help from the course team using the forum.

Instructions for mentors#

We value your interest in becoming a mentor for the Programming Course.

What do I do as a mentor?#

As a mentor, you will help your colleagues to learn programming. You will guide them through the course materials, answer their questions, introduce good coding practices to them, and give them advice on their project.

If you have any questions either about the project or programming, we are of course happy to help. Reach out to us via the Kavli forum.

What are the benefits of being a mentor?#

We all learned programming from someone. As a mentor you are paying this forward. You are also teaching your colleagues to write better code. Trust us—it will help you in the long run.

Naturally, we would like to reward your effort more. We checked if we can also award graduate school credits for mentoring, but we can’t :(

How much work is it?#

The course should take a full week of work for the participants, but there is no strict deadline and the coursework can be spread over a longer period of time. The participants will complete the coursework at their own pace, but it is important that the mentor and participants agree on a timeline prior to starting the course.

What are the requirements?#

We require you to have previous experience with Python programming, git version control, and linux shell usage at the level of the content you find in our lectures. We also require you to be available for at least some time.

How do I register as a mentor?#

To register as a mentor, you need to

  1. Sign up to the Kavli forum.

  2. Sign in to the forum and request access to the Casimir Programming Course category.

  3. Add yourself (your name and affiliation) to the forum’s list of mentors.