Salon 2
Transforming the Classroom to Teach Statistics and Data Science with Active Learning (303284)
*Stephanie Hicks, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/HarvardKeywords: statistics, data science, classroom, teaching, active learning
Universities across the world are responding to the unprecedented demand of training in statistics and data science by the creation of new courses, curriculums and degrees in applied statistics and data science. I have participated in two data science courses taught at Harvard as the lead teaching fellow in 2014 and as a co-instructor in 2016, which included both in person and online students. In this talk, I will discuss how we transformed the usual classroom by utilizing active learning and collaborative techniques to teach concepts in statistics and data science. Examples include motivating real-world problems with data and code instead giving of traditional lectures, using Google Polls to get live feedback, and teaching the importance of version control and collaborative practices with git/GitHub. In every assignment, students performed a complete data analysis integrated programming skills with statistical analyses. As a final project, students analyzed a dataset of their choice and created a website and two minute video summarizing their results. This led to many students successfully obtaining jobs by discussing their homework and final projects in job interviews.