Teaching and learning with python

Explore resources to introduce undergraduate students in the life sciences to Python programming

Want to incorporate coding into your neuroscience course?

Explore our openly available teaching resources designed to support instructors in introducing Python programming using real neuroscience datasets. Whether you’re new to coding or looking to deepen your students’ skills, our materials are tailored to help you scaffold coding instruction in a biologically meaningful context.

Audience: Undergraduate educators teaching neuroscience or a related discipline.

Instructor pointing to a screen with a presentation in a room full of educators. — Ashley Juavinett leading a session on teaching Python to undergraduate biology students at the 2025 Open Science in Undergraduate Education Symposium.

Featured Resources:

Workshop Resources (Beginner):

Access Colab notebooks and resources that were shared with attendees at the 2025 Coding with Allen Institute Data Workshop, led by Ashley Juavinett (USCD), Theresa H. McKim (UNR), and Rachel Penton (Allen Institute). Includes resources that cover basic Python concepts such as objects, data structures, control flow, and functions. These notebooks assume little-to-no prior experience with Python.

Epilepsy Case Study (Beginner):

This Colab notebook, written by Theresa H. McKim (UNR) and based on the work of Milligan et al. (2023), walks students through how to investigate questions of interest about epilepsy by using open data from the Allen Institute’s cell types database. This notebook is suitable for students with little-to-no prior experience with Python.

Visual Coding (Moderate):

A collection of three Colab notebooks created by Saskia de Vries (Allen Institute) suitable for neuroscience students with prior Python experience. These notebooks guide students through analyzing an openly available 2-photon calcium imaging dataset from the Allen Brain Observatory.

Teaching and learning with python

All resources are openly available via our GitHub repository.

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