The Data Mine: Enabling Data Science Across the Curriculum

Abstract

In this article, we describe a large-scale living learning community (LLC) for undergraduate students of any major or background. Our students are united by a desire to learn data science skills and to apply those skills in a specific academic discipline or a corporate partner project. We provide explanations of why an LLC is beneficial; the curriculum (motivated by Nolan and Temple Lang); resources required to coordinate such a community; lessons learned from the first year at a large scale; plans for an assessment and a shared resource repository; and plans for an even more accessible, differentiated learning environment in the future.

Keywords

• data science
• introductory statistics
• learning communities
• massive datasets
• statistical computing
• undergraduate curriculum