Lesson Design

Last updated on 2026-10-19 | Edit this page

Pacing and overall schedule

The lesson is designed for a half-day workshop of about 4 hours including breaks. The episodes build on each other, but the last two episodes (pandas and APIs) can be taught independently of each other.

Possible paths through the lesson

  • Short session (2 hours): Getting Started + Python basics (episodes 2-5)
  • Half day (4 hours): all episodes
  • Python basics already known: Getting Started + pandas + APIs

Episodes and suggested timing

Time Episode Teaching Exercises
09:00 Welcome, code of conduct, setup 15 min
09:15 Getting Started (JupyterLab) 15 min 5 min
09:35 Variables and Data Types 15 min 5 min
09:55 Operators, Functions and Methods 15 min 10 min
10:20 Coffee break 15 min
10:35 Lists and Dictionaries 15 min 10 min
11:00 Loops and Conditionals 15 min 10 min
11:25 Introduction to pandas 25 min 10 min
12:00 Coffee break 10 min
12:10 Retrieving Metadata from an API 20 min 10 min
12:40 Wrap-up and feedback 20 min

Data

All data is downloaded during the lesson, so learners need an internet connection:

  • OpenAPC: article processing charges paid by FU Berlin in 2015 (61 articles, 17 columns).
  • DataCite REST API: metadata of datasets and other research outputs registered with DataCite.

Source material

The episodes are based on the following notebooks by ZB MED, which can also be used directly in a workshop: