Today we celebrate International Women’s Day! The 2025 theme is #AccelerateAction and is an important message that focuses on speeding up the achievement of gender equality. At its current rate it is predicted that we won’t achieve gender equality until 2158 and so this International Women’s Day calls for us to work together to create a more inclusive world. You can view the resources below inspired by International Women’s Day. These include a selection of LinkedIn Learning videos and courses, please note that the University’s subscription to LinkedIn Learning finishes on 28th March 2025. If you have completed any training courses on LinkedIn Learning and wish to retain your certificate(s) of completion, please view our previous blogpost to learn more about this.
Code First Girls: Code First Girls is a free online service that is partnered with Aberystwyth University and is dedicated to providing coding courses to help women and non-binary people develop their coding skills.
11th February 2025 is International Day of Women in Science, promoting the importance of women in STEM and the continued value in providing resources and open spaces for women to develop their skills.
A key resource available to all women and non-binary persons available with Aberystwyth University is Code First Girls. Code First Girls is a free online service that is partnered with Aberystwyth University and is dedicated to providing coding courses to help women and non-binary people develop their coding skills. Code First Girls hosted a session at the Digital Skills Festival 2023, you can watch the session where they discussed more about the programmes and courses they deliver and the importance of their work.
A member of the Digital Skills Team participated in one of the courses provided by Code First Girls, you can read about their experience through their blogpost here. Or you can view their thoughts on the 5 reasons you should sign up to Code First Girls.
If you are interested in learning more about Code First Girls or would like to sign up to one of their courses, visit their website.
Please note that Code First Girls is open to women and non-binary people. If you are not eligible to undertake the courses offered through Code First Girls, there are many other free opportunities available, you can find more information about these opportunities on our free external resources’ webpage.
In the last year, the Digital Skills Team including the Student Digital Champions have published many blogposts covering a lot of digital topics and issues. Here are the top 5 blogposts from 2023/24!
My experience with Code First Girls: Read about one of our experiences in taking a course with Code First Girls and why you should consider joining a course too!
Introducing the new AI coaching chatbot in LinkedIn Learning: In case you missed it – a new feature introduced on LinkedIn Learning where an AI coaching chatbot can now provide recommendations and help improve your LinkedIn Learning experience.
Blogpost by Jia Ping Lee (Digital Capabilities and Skills Development Coordinator)
I remember first stumbling across Code First Girls through their social media during the summer of 2023, and then I learnt of Aberystwyth University’s new partnership with them. Having had no prior experience of coding and not having much knowledge about the tech world, I was surprised at how easy it was to look through the courses that Code First Girls were offering and regardless of what level of coding you had – there would be an appropriate course for you.
Being a complete beginner with coding languages, I had a look through their introductory courses titled MOOCs (Code First Girls’ massive open online courses). These courses were designed to introduce and provide beginner level tech skills and help build up confidence in an area of your choice. What I thought was fantastic about these courses was how it was organised and rolled out. With MOOC Sprints, they were running over 4 weeks with 1 one-hour live session per week and after the Sprint ended, you had the opportunity to test your knowledge and experience real world problem solving with MOOC Challenges and receive a certificate of completion after passing the session quizzes. I experienced a variety of the introduction courses offered including coding, web development and solving problems with Python. As I was able to review what I learned at my own pace after classes, it wasn’t as overwhelming as I initially thought, and the course tutors were always available to contact if you needed extra help or guidance.
Having thoroughly enjoyed taking the first steps towards gaining some tech confidence, I am looking forward to developing the skills I’ve learnt from the introductory courses and progressing onto the next level. I think that the most important lesson I have taken away from this experience is to never be afraid of trying something new that is outside of your comfort zone. The coding world may initially seem scary and difficult to get into, especially if you hadn’t learned about it before. But with Code First Girls, they really are here to help guide and support us to achieve the best skillset we need for future exciting opportunities!
Take a look at this blogpost where you’ll find 5 reasons why you should take advantage of Aberystwyth University’s partnership with Code First Girls. To find out more information about all the opportunities available with Code First Girls, please visit their website.
Have you ever wanted to learn how to code? Well now you can do so, for free, by taking full advantage of our partnership with Code First Girls! We’ve listed 5 reasons below why you should make the most of this wonderful opportunity.
