<aside> 📅 July 2020
</aside>
<aside> 🖋️ The TRACE Camp Team
</aside>
$$ \Large\textbf{A Review of TRACE Camp} $$
Since 2018, TRACE Camp has helped over 60 students thanks to $40k+ in ITSAB grant funding. Our mission is to teach students pragmatic programming and complement Clemson’s Computer Science curriculum with modern web technologies. Responses from surveys we regularly collect show the six boot camps we’ve held have truly helped students in these areas.
About TRACE Camp & our original plan for 2020
About TRACE Camp & our original plan for 2020
We collect this data so we can adapt quickly to the needs of our students and make structural changes to the following camps. Through this method, we’ve found students consistently love the experience.
Summer 2020
Winter 2019/2020
Summer 2019
Even though TRACE Camp is challenging, we found students still loved the experience. We focus on the boot camp experience as a whole. For example, in our in-person boot camps, we provided both breakfast and lunch to our students so they could stay and focus on their learning. With remote learning, we tried to make the course as logistically easy for the students as possible and tried to eliminate places where online courses go wrong. At every crossroads, we found ourselves coming back to what we think makes our camp great: dedicating our resources towards the students. By keeping our focus on the students, we successfully taught them pragmatic programming:
One of the most productive experiences I’ve had!
As someone who has never coded before, trace camp really got me into coding. I plan to definitely continue exploring web design and coding.
Trace Camp jump started my software development career by giving me access to web development tools, improving my web development skills, and helping me populate my github with the projects I’ve made.
Summer 2020
Winter 2019/2020
Summer 2019
Students also thought our course was just as valuable or more valuable than Clemson computer science courses:
Trace camp helps you learn valuable skills on topics that don’t always come up in regular classes
Summer 2020
Another important part of the experience is creating a real sense of community. It is vital for students to go to each other for help and create a sense of belonging. This is difficult to do with a generally introverted crowd, along with some students telling us they aren’t interested in making friends. By the end of the boot camp, we saw success in seeing friendships form and last long after the camp and with many participants saying they feel apart of a larger community:
Summer 2020
Winter 2019/2020
Summer 2019
This atmosphere wouldn't be possible without keeping a casual tone with our students. We’re students too, so we tried to keep our course real and relevant to them. The result: they loved it. Students reached out to us more, asked us more questions, and enjoyed the experience more:
The more casual approach from Trace Camp made learning the material much more enjoyable.
They were incredibly kind and understanding. Not rushing or telling me to look things up as if I hadn’t tried doing so on my own like I’ve experienced with other CS instructors.
We are very proud to say that out of our two most recent camps, 100% of respondents said they would recommend TRACE Camp: