UP Legacies: Alumni establishes an IT company to teach programming

by Mothusi Mokalane | Aug 3, 2022 | News

EaziCode is an online coding tutoring company founded by University of Pretoria alumni Ngoni Mujuru, together with Thato Tshukudu and Tshegofatso Isaac. With their collective skills in software development, social media management, and  tutoring students, their aim is to introduce programming to children from the ages of 9 to 16, by providing them with educational computer science courses that will enable them to be competitive in the twenty-first century. They recently conducted their first project at Boitumelong Secondary School and have exciting projects planned for the near future.

With the Fourth Industrial Revolution upon us, EaziCode seeks to provide children with the tools to better their understanding of the digital space. EaziCode was established after the founders recognised a gap in the current primary and secondary education curriculum. EaziCode stated, “We were able to identify in our research that most local curriculums for primary and secondary education in South Africa do not have programming as a taught fundamental skill.”, They further explained, “within an increasingly digital world, EaziCode enables us to bridge this gap and enable students to learn programming and build creative products at a much younger age”. 

The main areas of focus of EaziCode tutors are practical application, fun, relatability, and simplification. The mentioned areas are what drive the group and individual sessions. “We believe that coding needs to be practically applied in coding tutorials and tests, so that a student can gain significant value out of it. It needs to have an element of fun to counter the complexities and frustrations of coding. It needs to be taught and explained using examples that are relevant to the student. Lastly, we focus a lot on making sure that it is easily understood,” stated EaziCode. 

EaziCode asserted the value of the tutoring lessons for learners’ development, saying: “Our students are able to gain confidence on tackling much more complex topics within computer science alone once they finish our intermediate courses.” They aim to guide students up the hill of first understanding the fundamental principles of coding and computer science, and then to inspire enough discipline in them to continue their journey of learning and expanding their technical skills.

Every project faces challenges, and for EaziCode it is the lack of consistency from learners. “We have identified that students tend to lack consistency in working and developing their coding skills outside of the weekly sessions. But it must be noted that the majority of the students who fall under this bracket are typically new to coding and usually do not know how to go about upskilling themselves independent of our tutors,” claimed the company. The EaziCode tutors want their students to possess the ability to code without any assistance, commenting: “This is important to us because in the industry we work in, one can be expected to learn a programming language or framework within a short period of time with no guidance. So it is ideal that our learners learn to be autonomous in their learning and expansion of their technical skills.”

EaziCode currently has a rotation of around 20+ students per month across their current courses. Their services are not free, as they have paid courses that can be browsed on their website. However, they have free orientation classes for each paid course so that a potential paying learner is able to experience their tutoring services before committing to the course. EaziCode is hoping to explore a partnership with the University of Pretoria in the near future.

Their vision as a company is to make programming a common skill for young students. EaziCode noted, “just like we value our children learning maths and geography at a young age, we envision programming being a skill that will also be just as valued”.

 

Image: provided

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History, Archaeology and Setswana student at the University of Pretoria. An avid reader and lover of news writing and broadcasting. I have a passion for African indigenous languages and history. A prospective world-class journalist and scholar