A new report on the “Keeping Data Science Broad: Negotiating the Digital and Data Divide Among Higher Education Institutions” initiative was released by the South Big Data Hub and collaborators, including the Midwest Hub. This initiative brought together the BD Hubs community and other stakeholders to explore pathways for keeping data science education broadly inclusive.
Activities included three webinars and a workshop over the course of 2017-2018. The webinars explored case studies of data science education in traditional and alternative contexts, both as standalone programs and as courses integrated into cognate curricula. Different modes of instruction and communication, including MOOCs, webinars, and bootcamps, were also addressed.
The workshop brought together teaching-focused faculty from a variety of institutional contexts, including community colleges, four year liberal arts colleges, and minority serving institutions, to discuss challenges related to capacity building and capability within their institutions or disciplines.
The participants formed writing groups that systematically cataloged ideas of what a vision of a bright future would look like for data science, from which twenty-nine white papers were produced during the two day workshop.
Following the workshop, an editing team consisting of workshop participants and South Hub staff distilled their work into the newly-released report, which included ranked lists of most important next steps.
The full report is available here (PDF).
Videos from the three webinars are available here.