The Landscape of Introductory Data Science Courses

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Why we include this research

Before a field can agree on what an introductory course should teach, it helps to have a clear, evidence-based picture of what these courses currently do teach, who teaches them, and where they are offered. The Motivational Attitudes and Statistics / Data Science Education Research (MASDER) team provides a research-based snapshot of this landscape.

This research complements the GAISE College Report recommendations and is foundational to the broader, ongoing work of developing student learning outcomes (SLOs) for introductory data science courses.

About this research

This work comes from the MASDER Project and specifically from a national survey of introductory data science (IntroDS) courses taught in the United States. The survey was distributed to a stratified random sample of institutions and through professional channels including the American Statistical Association (ASA), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and presentations at major conferences (JSM, USCOTS, SIGCSE). One hundred forty-four valid responses were collected and summarized in the analyses.

The research addresses three linked questions:

• WHAT is being taught in the IntroDS Course?
• WHO is teaching the IntroDS Course?
• WHERE is the IntroDS Course Taught?

Together, these findings offer a research-based snapshot of the current landscape. Visit the MASDER Data Science Landscape page for more information.

The MASDER Research Team

We are grateful to MASDER’s research team and advisory board for their willingness to share their findings to strengthen the College GAISE report. We want to recognize the dedication it took to accomplish this significant research to build a representative national picture of a fast-moving field. The College GAISE report benefits from the evidence base this team has built. This research reflects years of sustained, careful work by the MASDER team, and we want to name that work and the people behind it.

The MASDER team’s work on data science landscape is led by Dr. Michael A. Posner (Villanova University) and Dr. April Kerby-Helm (Winona State University). The MASDER team also includes Dr. Douglas Whitaker (Mount Saint Vincent University) and Dr. Marjorie Bond (Penn State University), and was led by Dr. Alana Unfried (Principal Investigator, CSU Monterey Bay). Their combined expertise in instrument development, statistics and data science education research, and student attitudes research is what makes this landscape study possible.

The syllabus content analysis was conducted by Dr. Jennifer Broatch and Heike Lieske at Arizona State University.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. DUE-2423026 and DUE-2013392. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the original researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This summary was prepared at the request of the GAISE College Report Steering Committee.