CS Circles: An In-Browser Python Course for Beginners
It addresses the need for accessible programming education for beginners, but it is incremental as it builds on existing online course platforms.
The paper presents CS Circles, a free in-browser Python course for beginners designed to be fun and accessible, featuring over 100 exercises across 30 lessons and available in English and French.
Computer Science Circles is a free programming website for beginners that is designed to be fun, easy to use, and accessible to the broadest possible audience. We teach Python since it is simple yet powerful, and the course content is well-structured but written in plain language. The website has over one hundred exercises in thirty lesson pages, plus special features to help teachers support their students. It is available in both English and French. We discuss the philosophy behind the course and its design, we describe how it was implemented, and we give statistics on its use.