Getting started
A free online course that teaches you to program in Python from nothing. You write and run real code in your browser, the exercises are checked automatically, and an AI tutor sits beside your work the whole way.
The first lesson needs no account and costs nothing. Read on if you want to know what you are getting into first.
The course is continuous
There is no start date and no end date. There is no cohort you have to keep up with, and there are no deadlines on any of the work. You join whenever you happen to find it, you work at whatever pace your week allows, and you stop and come back a month later without losing anything. Every step you finish stays finished.
People do drift away from self-paced courses, so the honest advice is to book yourself a regular half hour rather than to promise yourself a whole free Saturday.
What is in it
Nineteen sections and seventy-three modules, starting at what a variable is and ending at classes, file handling, testing, and small web and desktop apps. A module is a handful of short steps rather than a chapter you set an evening aside for.
Real videos
Most modules open with a narrated lecture of one to three minutes. They are recorded, not placeholders.
Readings you can run
The examples in the text are live editors. Change one and run it. A visualizer steps through the code line by line.
Exercises that check themselves
Submitting runs hidden tests that inspect the values inside your program, so printing the right thing by accident does not pass.
There is nothing to install
Python runs inside your browser. You do not download Python, you do not install an editor, and you do not need permission from anyone who administers your machine. A laptop or a Chromebook is enough.
The one cost is the first page load. The browser fetches a Python runtime of roughly 12 MB before it can run anything, so the first lesson takes a moment to warm up and the Run button stays greyed out while the editor header reads loading…. After that your browser keeps it, and everything is instant.
Tip. Because Python runs on your own machine rather than on ours, running code is free and unlimited. Click Run as often as you like. Nothing is rationed except the AI tutor.
How to join
You need an account when you want your work saved: your progress, your XP, your grades, and a certificate at the end. You also need one to use the AI tutor, which is the only part of a lesson that costs us money per question. Reading a lesson and running code need nothing at all.
Try a lesson first
Nobody should sign up for something they have not opened. Go do the first module, then come back.
Sign in with Google
That creates your account and nothing else. It does not put you in the course, and it is not a commitment to anything.
Ask for a place
One short form. You confirm you are 18 or over, agree to the terms and the privacy notice, and optionally write a line about what you want out of the course.
Wait for a person
Requests are read and approved by course staff, one at a time, not by a script. Usually a day or two. The course appears on your courses page the moment it is approved, and there is nothing you need to do in the meantime.
Sign-ups are not open yet. The course itself is, though: everything below works without an account. Email adisak@iastate.edu if you want to be told when places open.
What the AI tutor does, and what it keeps
The tutor is built to ask before it answers. It can see the code you ran and the error it produced, and it walks a ladder: a guiding question first, then the concept, then a similar pattern, then an explanation of your error message. Handing over a finished solution is switched off in the settings, and asking outright for the answer gets you a polite refusal and a lower rung instead.
Be clear about what that is, though. The ladder is an instruction to a language model, not a lock on a door. It holds most of the time, it is allowed to go further once you have made a few attempts at an exercise, and like any model it can simply be wrong. Run the code. If the tutor and Python disagree, Python is right.
Separately from the tutor, each exercise carries three or four written hints. Those cost 30 XP each, the price is printed on the button before you click it, and every XP counter on the screen drops the moment you take one. Tutor questions are capped instead of priced, at 25 a day by default.
Read this bit twice. Every message you send the tutor is stored on your account, and course staff can read the whole conversation word for word. Pressing “Start over” hides a thread from your panel, it does not delete it. Your question, your code, and your error output are sent to OpenAI, which runs the model. Do not type anything into the tutor that you would mind your instructor reading. The privacy notice spells out the rest.
Your first twenty minutes
If you only have one sitting, spend it like this.
Watch the two-minute video
The first module opens with a short lecture called “What is a variable?”. Watch it and click Mark watched.
Read the page and run the example
The next step is a short reading with a real editor inside it. Click Run. The very first run waits for Python to finish downloading, so give it a moment.
Solve “Storing variables”
Your first exercise. Fill in the blanks, click Run Code as many times as you like, then click Submit Answer to check it against the hidden tests.
Break something on purpose
Delete a quote mark and run it again. Reading the error Python gives you is most of what this course teaches.
Then, if you have signed in, ask the tutor one real question
The tutor is the one part of a lesson that needs an account, because it costs real money per question. Once you have one, type what is actually confusing you rather than the word “help”: it can see the code you ran and the error you hit.
Then read the student guides
Eight short guides walk through the rest of the platform one screen at a time: reading your dashboard, finding your way around the outline, working an exercise, spending hints, talking to the tutor, finishing a lab, and tracking your own progress. Every step names the button you click and shows you what it looks like.
Or see the whole interface in one page of annotated screenshots, with arrows on the buttons and almost nothing to read.
Still have a question?
Email adisak@iastate.edu. Before you sign up it is worth reading the privacy notice and the terms. They are short, and they say what actually happens rather than what is usually said.