Teaching Strudel to young girls: Realizing live coding through performance practice

Paper in proceeding, 2024

In this study, I discuss my first experience teaching young girls, 10-15 years old, how to use Strudel for music-making. The work presented here focuses on technical and logistical matters of organizing and carrying out such a teaching activity, and reports initial findings from the Creative Coding course at Chalmers University of Technology and the completion of the first batch of students. The study is based on my reflective diaries, to elicit nuanced information when organizing and teaching coding for music making workshops that aim to introduce young girls to programming. The teaching philosophy here acknowledges curiosity-based learning as a valuable pedagogical approach to student learning. The outcome of the course was celebrated with two public concerts so far. I discuss the practical aspects of organizing such a course and reflect on my diary notes. I report initial findings on how the students practiced using Strudel and discuss how young girls experienced dialogic liveness through performance practice. Several recommendations on best practices for teaching Strudel and music programming are presented.