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Offering Data Science Coursework to Non-Computing Majors

Published: 23 June 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Data science courses offered by computing departments tend to be inappropriate for non-computing majors due to the emphasis on coding and a long chain of prerequisite courses in computer science and mathematics or statistics. Moreover, courses designed for computing majors by computing faculty do not always match the backgrounds and interests of students majoring in other disciplines. This paper discusses the motivation and challenges of offering an entry-level data science course for students in non-computing disciplines with limited coding experience. Experiences with the teaching of this course at the Rochester Institute of Technology are discussed. Preliminary assessment results have shown this approach to be useful.

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cover image ACM Conferences
DataEd '23: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Data Systems Education: Bridging education practice with education research
June 2023
63 pages
ISBN:9798400702075
DOI:10.1145/3596673
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 23 June 2023

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Author Tags

  1. data science
  2. computer science principles
  3. non-computing majors
  4. data science learning platform

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