Computing student turns teacher

Published On Wed 26 Mar 2014 by Roddy Isles

A University of Dundee student has turned successful teacher by providing computing tuition to people around the world.

Jose Salvatierra (19), from Spain, is only in his second year studying Applied Computing at Dundee but he has already produced an entire computing course for beginners and made it available online, with hundreds of customers taking it within the first six weeks.

Jose’s `Computer Science for Everyone’ course is an introduction to all the important concepts of Computer Science in under 10 hours. Hosted on the Udemy platform, it features videos for easy instruction and a series of quizzes and assignments.

“I did some tutoring of first-year students last semester and that really gave me the confidence to go on and develop this course,” said Jose. “I actually used my own course for some of the work with the students and their reaction to it was really positive.

“Since I put the course on udemy I’ve had around 400 people sign up to it, mostly from the USA and India, which is fantastic.”

Among the early reviews from those who have taken the course it has been described as `a great introduction to computers’ and `covers Computing Science in a high quality way’.

Jose started programming at the age of 10, encouraged by his father. He also plays and teaches music, an interest that he is developing into another online course which will use a similar format to teach grades 1 and 2 of music theory.

“I’ve got a strong interest in teaching and the technology is there that allows you to deliver good quality courses very easily,” said Jose.

Dr Karen Petrie, Head of Undergraduate Studies in Computing at the University, said, “This is a fantastic piece of work by Jose and all the more impressive for the fact he has managed to put this together and manage it while maintaining excellence in his own studies.

“We encourage our students to think about entrepreneurship and how they can develop their own ideas for market, and Jose is a great example of how you can do that.”