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IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

  • 1.  IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-04-2022 12:26:00
    • What kind of program do you offer or will be offered? A certificate, A.A. degree, A.A.S degree, or A.S. degree?
    • Where is the data science program housed? In the math, statistics, computer science, information technology, or other department?
    • What types of data tools and skills will the program stress? Will the program include proprietary software or open source programming languages? (Examples: R and R Studio, Python, SQL, Git/Github, LaTex, Power BI, or Excel, to name a few)


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    Rachel Saidi
    Associate Professor and Data Science Program Coord
    Montgomery College
    Rockville MD
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  • 2.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-05-2022 11:47:00
    Saint Paul College offers an Associate of Science in Data Science. This program is housed within the Department of Computer Science. R and Python are the two primary programming languages we employ. Our program also requires SQL and Java programming.​

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    Enyinda Onunwor
    Dean of STEM
    Saint Paul College
    Saint Paul MN
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-05-2022 14:32:00
    Hi Enyinda,

    Thanks for sharing information about your program at Saint Paul College. It sounds similar to our A.S. Does your degree transfer to any four-year schools? Approximately how many unique students are working on this degree? 

    I look forward to hearing more about your program!

    Rachel

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    Rachel Saidi
    Associate Professor and Data Science Program Coord
    Montgomery College
    Rockville MD
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-05-2022 16:30:00
    Hi Rachel,

    Our Data Science AS degree program was designed for students planning to pursue a bachelor's degree, and the majority of our graduates transfer. Our program is relatively new, with approximately 20 students enrolled. We emphasize courses required for transfer to four-year institutions, which limits our creativity, particularly when compared to a certificate program. We do our best to provide students with skills that can be applied in the workplace. Our students are given research and programming projects with real-world Data Science themes and data. There are also group discussions in the research projects that necessitate the study and investigation of Data Science topics. The programming projects are for hands-on learning, including the fundamentals of statistical analysis algorithms. Astrophysics, climate/weather, finance, and statistical analysis of sporting events are among the applications we investigate.

    -Enyinda

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    Enyinda Onunwor
    Dean of STEM
    Saint Paul College
    Saint Paul MN
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-05-2022 17:55:00
    Hi Enyinda,

    It sounds like we are on the same page with our degree designs, expectations, and student experiences. One difference is that we have both a degree and a certificate. The certificate students tend to be working professionals interested in upskilling and augmenting their prior degrees and domain knowledge with data science acumen. Most of those students are not interested in transferring, but rather hope to change careers or build on their current ones.

    Best,
    Rachel

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    Rachel Saidi
    Associate Professor and Data Science Program Coord
    Montgomery College
    Rockville MD
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-05-2022 17:17:00
    At Red Rocks CC in Lakewood Colorado we are planning to have an A.S. Degree available in the next few years. We just created the courses and had them approved by the CCCS this year.
    The Data Science program is housed in Math with all classes being developed and taught by Math faculty. We did create DAT as a separate discipline and tried to hire someone this year but it did not work out. So one of our Math folks is switching to be MAT/DAT. 
    We have been using Python for all Calc and above courses and so this will be the primary technology tool but there are plans to R and some other tools in the new courses.

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    Matthew Watts
    Assistant Professor
    Red Rocks CC
    Lakeside CO
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-05-2022 17:58:00
    Hi Matthew, 

    Thanks for sharing Red Rocks CC's upcoming data science program. I do understand the challenge of finding faculty. We are currently creating professional development workshops for faculty in math and statistics who might want to get into data science classes. In fact, we would like to make these workshops available to faculty across disciplines at our college. That is excellent that all your Calc courses already incorporate Python.

    Best,
    Rachel

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    Rachel Saidi
    Associate Professor and Data Science Program Coord
    Montgomery College
    Rockville MD
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-06-2022 15:00:00
    Hi.  I teach at a four-year school, but I'd like to join in.  We offer a bachelor's and master's in Data Analytics.  Data Analytics is a separate department, although the dean who is in charge of math is also in charge of data analytics.  For the bachelor's we cover a range of Python, R, MySQL, PowerBi, probably others in electives.  We require data analytics majors to take one semester of calculus, a math course in statistics, followed by a math course in multiple regression, but we are not what I would consider a math-heavy data analytics program.

    I suspect that where the program is housed makes a lot of difference.  If it is housed in the computer department, then it will probably be a more computer-oriented program than if it is housed in the math department.  A third possibility is housing it in the business department.

    I personally had felt the whole data analysis thing had somehow passed me by, so I went back to school and earned a masters in data analytics at the same school.  My master's included more data analysis tools such as decision trees, random forests, market basket analysis, and principal component analysis (PCA).  (By the way, PCA finally answers my age-old question of what is a practical use of eigenvalues and eignevectors.)

    One thing my school's bachelor's and master's program omits is computer simulation.  I think computer simulation is an extremely versatile tool that helps address problems that have no simple closed-form solution.

    I continue to learn by subscribing to blogs of people who post their R code, and then by trying out their code.  I very occasionally post myself on one  R blog.  R is incredibly powerful.  I can do so much more in R than I can in Excel.  (The same can probably be said for Python, but I have concentrated on R.)  For example, I cheat in Wordle because I wrote a program in R that narrows down the possibilities after each guess and tells me the frequency of letters in the remaining words.  Yes, I know this is cheating, but I am pleased with myself for having written the program - it would be so much harder to do in Excel.

    There are seemingly unlimited real-world databases available online to experiment with, and I encourage suggesting students explore these.  You can play with credit card default, housing prices, baseball, speed dating, politicians' tweets, and the list is seemingly endless.

    Happy data sciencing.

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    Jerome Tuttle
    Online adjunct instructor
    Southern New Hampshire University
    Manchester NH
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    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-07-2022 06:37:00
    Thank you for joining the conversation, Jerome.

    I agree with all your points. It is especially important at the two-year college level where the data science program is housed, because the design of the program determines if and how it will transfer to a four-year institution or provide career opportunities. At my school, we found that creating multiple options ensures that students can find a pathway upon completing their work with us. We have created a certificate, a A.A. in General Studies STEM with data science concentration, a new A.S. in Data Science, and we are working on a business analytics degree. Many of the courses overlap among the programs, but the different options provide us the flexibility to accommodate students' varying goals as well as their mathematics and statistics abilities. 

    I also appreciate your comment that you felt data science had passed you by and so you chose to go back to school for a degree in data analytics. I think your sentiment resonates with many mathematics and statistics faculty. I believe it is important for organizations like AMATYC, ASA, MAA and others to provide professional development opportunities to faculty so that they can gain exposure to data science and participate in teaching these classes. 

    Warmly,
    Rachel

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    Rachel Saidi
    Associate Professor and Data Science Program Coord
    Montgomery College
    Rockville MD
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    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-08-2022 15:55:00
    Sorry I am a little late to this discussion. My college currently doesn't offer any program in data science, but I am proposing an AS degree in data science this fall. It is a transfer program. I am not proposing an AAS or a certificate right now because I haven't written a business plan for this degree yet. I may do that in the future. The program will be housed in the mathematics department, but I am contact with the computer science department about using the courses in their area, such as SQL and Python. We will be using RStudio, SQL, and Python in the courses in the degree. I am hoping our curriculum committee approves the new courses and the pathway for this degree.

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    Kathryn Kozak
    Instructor
    Coconino CC
    Flagstaff AZ
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    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: IMPACT in Action - Questions about Data Science Pedagogy

    Posted 07-09-2022 11:30:00
    Thanks for joining the conversation, Kate! 

    I hope your proposal gets approval! We appreciate all the work you have done to promote data science at two-year colleges!!

    Rachel

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    Rachel Saidi
    Associate Professor and Data Science Program Coord
    Montgomery College
    Rockville MD
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    Original Message


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