Launching an online coding school in one month

Code Like a Girl had a strong community and a history of running in-person coding workshops for adults. Those workshops were useful and energising, but they were intentionally light-touch: three-hour introductions to topics like HTML and Python.

When COVID changed how people were learning and working, demand shifted. Code Like a Girl saw an opportunity to turn that workshop model into something deeper: a structured online school where students could spend ten weeks building real skills, completing projects, and moving towards a visible credential.

I joined in August 2020 with an early September rollout already committed. Pre-sales had started, curriculum developers had been contracted, and some of the technical architecture had been scaffolded: a basic React application, a Node.js back end using Lambda functions, AWS Cognito, and Stripe. There were also early design assets and screen mockups.

But the learning product itself was still mostly unbuilt. The account experience was bare-bones, the front end still felt wireframe-like, and the LMS features students and staff needed did not exist yet.

The work was not simply to put course content online. It was to turn Code Like a Girl’s community education model into an operating system for online learning.

The product challenge

The deadline was real because students had already started buying.

That created a useful constraint. We did not have time to design an ideal learning platform in the abstract. We had to identify the minimum version that could support a serious ten-week student journey, while also giving the internal team enough tooling to upload content, support learners, track progress, and issue certificates.

The first version needed to support three courses: Foundations of Web Development, Python Primer, and Programming in C#. Each course had ten lessons, and each lesson had five to seven modules. Modules could include theory, quizzes, assignments, and project work.

The product also had to support two different commercial models:

• a self-directed experience, where students could work through materials at their own pace
• a premium cohort experience, where students also had tutor support, Slack access, weekly sessions, and a stronger sense of belonging

The hard part was deciding what had to exist for launch and what could wait.

The mockups included a resources shelf for additional materials and a flash cards feature for revision. Both were useful ideas, but neither was essential to the first successful learning loop. They were cut from v1 so we could focus on the pieces that made the core student experience work.

Discovery

The biggest discovery was that a ten-week online course is a very different product from a three-hour workshop.

In a workshop, the product can lean heavily on the energy of the room. Students arrive, follow along, ask questions, and leave with a small win. In an online course, especially one that stretches over ten weeks, the product has to carry more of the structure.

Students needed to know where to start, what to do next, how far they had progressed, what support was available, and what counted as completion. Cohort students also needed to feel connected to their tutor, their peers, Slack, and the wider Code Like a Girl community.

At the same time, the internal team needed a way to publish and manage content without asking engineers to hard-code every lesson. Student comms, onboarding emails, Slack support, cohort operations, and curriculum development were all being built in parallel.

That shaped the product decision: the platform had to make the learning journey legible for students and manageable for the team.

What we built

We built the learner-facing experience around a dashboard that reflected the student’s path through the course.

After seeing an ad or email, a prospective student landed in a storefront experience where they could choose or confirm a course. From there, they created an account, completed checkout, and received post-purchase email confirmation. We adapted the Stripe experience to support coupons, bundle pricing, and the commercial structure around self-directed and cohort learning.

Once a student landed on their dashboard, the experience changed based on what they had purchased. Self-directed learners could immediately access their learning materials and work through them independently. Cohort students saw additional information about their cohort, tutor, Slack access, and tutoring sessions.

The learning experience itself needed to support videos, written theory, quizzes, assignments, project work, and lesson progression. Behind the scenes, we built progression logic so the system could calculate coursework completion and determine when a student had reached 100%.

We also built the admin side of the LMS so content could be uploaded and managed by the team. That mattered because curriculum, student experience, and engineering were all moving at once. The product could not depend on engineers being the publishing bottleneck.

Alongside the core LMS, we built email flows and nudges, analytics, and digital certification. When students completed all coursework, Code Like a Girl could issue a digital certificate they could share on LinkedIn.

Rollout

The launch brought together product, engineering, curriculum, and student experience work under a very tight timeline.

Students arrived through social media, email, and the existing Code Like a Girl audience. After purchase, they received onboarding information and access to their dashboard. Cohort students also received guidance on how to participate in Slack, attend tutoring sessions, and make the most of the student experience.

The course experience combined self-paced learning with human support. Students worked through materials in their own time, completed quizzes and assignments, and built projects. Cohort students met weekly with a tutor, had extra touchpoints with the Code Like a Girl team, and were invited into the wider community through internship program information sessions and event access.

At the end of the cohort, students took part in a showcase where partners and the Code Like a Girl team could see the projects they had built.

The first launch had 60 students across six cohorts.

Outcomes

School of Code launched as a new online education product for Code Like a Girl, moving the organisation beyond short workshops into structured ten-week learning pathways.

The initial launch brought 60 students into six cohorts, and the program continued to roll out quarterly after that. The platform also supported government cohort sales, including training for the Australian Public Service Commission and the Victorian State Government.

Over time, the platform expanded beyond the initial cohort model. We added self-directed learning pathways and self-service ecommerce, creating a more scalable revenue strand alongside tutor-supported cohorts.

The work also became a foundation for later Code Like a Girl products. School of Code badges and course completion data later connected into the internship talent platform, helping candidates show evidence of learning as part of their pathway into paid work.

What I learned

The useful lesson was that speed only works when the team is disciplined about the core loop.

For School of Code, the core loop was not “buy a course and see content.” It was: choose a course, understand your path, make steady progress, get support when you need it, complete meaningful project work, and leave with proof of what you learned.

That meant some nice ideas had to wait. The resources shelf and flash cards would have added value, but they were not as important as dashboards, lessons, progression logic, assignments, admin publishing, comms, analytics, and certification.

This project taught me to think about learning products as systems of momentum. The software, content, tutor support, community, reminders, and certification all had to work together so students could keep moving.