Suraj Rampure

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2021-106

May 14, 2021

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2021/EECS-2021-106.pdf

Many universities are creating undergraduate data science curriculum in order to fulfill increasing demand in industry for quantitative skills across disciplines. The first such course is often an "Introduction to Data Science" course that provides an introduction to computation and statistics in a single semester. At some schools – UC Berkeley in particular – this course can be quite large and consist of a student population with varying levels of prior experience in the field. Some students, particularly those without prior computing experience, can feel intimidated and hesitate to take such courses, even though they often are designed without any prerequisites.

We identified an opportunity for a small-scale pre-introductory data science course focusing on computational thinking rather than data science as a whole, with the goal of encouraging students to pursue data science further while equipping them with the confidence and skills to do so. We designed and taught such a course in Spring 2021 at Berkeley to a class of 18 students. All 18 students reported being happy or very happy to have taken the course, and many plan on pursuing data science further in some capacity.

Advisors: Joshua Hug

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BibTeX citation:

@mastersthesis{Rampure:EECS-2021-106,
    Author= {Rampure, Suraj},
    Title= {A New Data-Focused Introductory Programming Course},
    School= {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley},
    Year= {2021},
    Month= {May},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2021/EECS-2021-106.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2021-106},
    Abstract= {Many universities are creating undergraduate data science curriculum in order to fulfill increasing demand in industry for quantitative skills across disciplines. The first such course is often an "Introduction to Data Science" course that provides an introduction to computation and statistics in a single semester. At some schools – UC Berkeley in particular – this course can be quite large and consist of a student population with varying levels of prior experience in the field. Some students, particularly those without prior computing experience, can feel intimidated and hesitate to take such courses, even though they often are designed without any prerequisites.

We identified an opportunity for a small-scale pre-introductory data science course focusing on computational thinking rather than data science as a whole, with the goal of encouraging students to pursue data science further while equipping them with the confidence and skills to do so. We designed and taught such a course in Spring 2021 at Berkeley to a class of 18 students. All 18 students reported being happy or very happy to have taken the course, and many plan on pursuing data science further in some capacity.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Thesis
%A Rampure, Suraj 
%T A New Data-Focused Introductory Programming Course
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2021
%8 May 14
%@ UCB/EECS-2021-106
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2021/EECS-2021-106.html
%F Rampure:EECS-2021-106