What’s Available on CodeHS for AP Computer Science A in Java

Here’s a post we shared out to the Facebook group of AP CS A teachers.

Hi all- my name is Jeremy and I’m the CEO at CodeHS. I hope everyone is having a great start to the school year! I know there have been a number of comments or questions on CodeHS so I wanted to make sure everyone had the most up to date information.

We have now two main versions of our AP CS A course, Mocha and Nitro.

Mocha is a course we have had for a number of years, used by many teachers. It teachers objects later, and uses some helper methods to make things like user input easier, and starts with a Karel for Java unit.

Nitro is our new course, aligned to the new College Board description including matching the unit and lesson sequence. This one uses the main method, Scanner, and is an objects-first curriculum.

Both are great and cover all the topics on the exam and what you may like more depends on your own preferences.

We now also have the labs available as projects in CodeHS.

Also, a cool new thing you may not have seen is we now support graphics and GUIs, all in the web browser, in Java.

You can use the courses as is, or you can create your own problems.

You can also assign problems from other teachers from the Problem Bank — there are tons of great assignments https://codehs.com/library/problem_bank?title_or_description=&item_type=&programming_language=2&prog_type=&order_by=votes

With our Pro version, you can easily remove, reorder, mix and match and set up the course exactly how you want.

We know it’s not one-size-fits-all, so if you want to add extra practice, or assign supplemental modules, use all your own problems, or remove problems you can do that.

We have an AP CS A review course, which you can use even if you aren’t using CodeHS during the year.

Students code all in the web (Java code runs on our servers), works on Chromebooks, saves their progress as they go, and has a nice built-in submission and grading system.

Also, you can create easily autogradeable problems, where you just write the method, give it the test cases, and it just works. This works with primitives, Objects, Collections, and even your own custom classes. I made a playlist to show a few samples: codehs.com/playlist/6677 (also if you want to get more advanced with autograders you can)

If you took a look at CodeHS a while ago and decided it wasn’t for you, I hope you take another look. A lot has changed and improved — and it’s very flexible, whether you are a 10 year+ CS veteran or a first year teacher.

If you have questions you can email us at hello@codehs.com

Thanks for reading! 😊