Professor Barba Launches a Beginner Course in Computing for Engineering Majors

Professor Lorena Barba, from GW, has announced an open online course on computing for engineers: Get Data Off The Ground with Python on the GW Engineering platform –built by IBL on the Open edX software.  This is the first in a series of course modules on computation for engineering students.

The first module in Engineering Computations creates a foundation for Python programming. “You learn to handle core data types (strings, lists) and also n-dimensional arrays. The first three lessons have essentially no mathematics, to focus on the programming patterns. The fourth lesson deals with creating and operating on arrays. The final lesson is a worked example of linear regression with real data. The target audience is first-year engineering students, but the course would be equally useful to students in any science or technology field,” explained Professor Barba.