How would you run a two-hour Claude Code workshop for students?
I run workshops for final-year business students and have two hours with a group of ten. I want them to try Claude Code and see how it differs from a chat window. Their laptops all have different setups, and I am unsure about subscriptions, which tasks to give, and how to coordinate the group. One idea is a fictional company that lost all its IT and must rebuild its org chart, CRM and website. Is that too much?
The fictional company is a good frame, but rebuilding all three systems is too much for two hours with setup included. Keep the story and give each pair one small, finishable job: a static website from a one-page brief, an org chart turned from a messy spreadsheet into a clean chart, or a tiny contact list app that reads and writes a CSV.
Remove setup from the session. Ask students to install and sign in before class with a short checklist, or use one identical environment for everyone, such as a cloud dev environment or a browser-based version of the tool. Ten different laptops will otherwise eat the first hour.
For accounts, check the current plan terms before you decide. A shared organization account with a spending limit per key is usually easier to manage for one session than ten personal subscriptions, and lets you switch access off afterwards.
To show the difference from chat, plan one moment where the agent reads files, runs something, hits an error and fixes it on its own. Then have each pair write a short instruction file and watch the next run follow it. End with five minutes of reviewing what it changed, so they leave knowing they own the result.
Listings mentioned
- Workshop Facilitation Guide Skill · skill by mohitagw15856Builds a full facilitation guide with timed blocks, activities and materials for a working session.
- Teaching Lesson Plan Skill · skill by mohitagw15856Turns the session into a lesson plan with learning objectives, activities, timing and a check at the end.
Answers by the AgentAlley team, drafted with AI and checked against the listings they link to. Not a real-person reply from the original thread.