Computing Concepts with Python

Open-access course materials for an introductory computer-science class — twelve Jupyter notebooks, twelve short case studies, and a few small interactive tools. Used in COMP 1150 at Rochester Community and Technical College and freely adaptable elsewhere.

Live site: https://brendanpshea.github.io/computing_concepts_python/

Author: Brendan Shea, PhD (brendan.shea@rctc.edu)

License: CC BY 4.0 — adapt and remix freely with credit.

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For students

Start at the course site. Each week pairs a notebook with a short case study:

• The notebook is a Jupyter notebook. Open it in Google Colab, run the cells, and try the exercises.
• The case study is a 20–30 minute read about the people, history, and arguments behind the technical material. The discussion questions have no answer key — they are for arguing about with other people.

For instructors

Everything is CC BY 4.0. Adapt, remix, fork. The course outline shows the twelve-week sequence, the design rationale, and the through-lines that connect the case studies to the notebooks.

Case studies are written in Quarto so they can be re-rendered to HTML, DOCX, or PDF, and re-skinned for a different course. See v2/case_study_style_guide.md for the conventions; v2/cases/case_study_template.qmd is a fill-in-the-blanks template.

To build the site locally:

# install Quarto: https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/
quarto render            # builds the whole site into ./docs/
quarto preview           # local server with live reload

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Repo layout

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├── index.qmd                       site landing page
├── v2/                             CURRENT COURSE (Second Edition, 2.0)
│   ├── notebooks/                  twelve Jupyter notebooks
│   ├── cases/                      twelve case studies (Quarto)
│   ├── course_outline.md           sequence, rationale, design notes
│   ├── notebook_template.md        notebook authoring guide
│   └── case_study_style_guide.md   case-study authoring guide
├── archive/                        previous versions (2024)
├── tools/                          small interactive tools
│   ├── python_code_quiz/           PyQuiz — IPython-widget practice
│   └── object_quest/               RPG-style quiz game
├── docs/                           rendered HTML (served by GitHub Pages)
├── _quarto.yml                     site configuration
└── LICENSE

Interactive tools

• PyQuiz — a Python coding-practice tool built on IPython widgets, runs in any Jupyter environment.
• ObjectQuest — a small RPG-style quiz game for object-oriented practice.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests welcome. For substantive changes to the case-study content or pedagogy, please open an issue first.