ABI India launches Codeathon.in for women students in small towns

Anita Borg Institute(ABI) India, a nonprofit organization focused on women advancement in the field of computing and technology has launched 2017 Codeathon.in for women students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) from smaller cities across India.

The initiative is an online codeathon from July to September that offers the students an opportunity to enhance their coding skills while developing innovative solutions; being held in select engineering colleges in Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), Mysore (Karnataka) and a few cities in Kerala. The objective of the codeathon is to tap into the female talent from smaller cities and provide them with a pool of technical resources to improve their programming skills.

The codeathon is a three step procedure-

Step 1: Students have to sign up for the free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Algorithms, Part I on Coursera. The course is prepared by Princeton University.

Step 2: Participants receive weekly tests via email while studying the course. The question set changes every week and is mandatory for all students.

Step 3: Upon completion of the course, the participants can form a team of maximum 5 members or choose to be individual contributors and submit their project on Navigate the Mars Rover. The project has to be uploaded on GitHub.

"There is a large pool of untapped talent in the smaller cities that have a lot of knowledge, though need more exposure and confidence-building. 2017 Codethon.in aims to bridge this gap," said Geetha Kannan, MD, ABI India.

As part of the competition, participants have to use the learning from the online course and make a submission for the project- Navigate the Mars Rover. The project involves designing and implementing a solution that will apply a variety of shortest path algorithms to help the Mars Rover find the optimal path between the starting point and the destination.