Discovery Workshop on Enhancing Data Science Education by Leveraging Data Sets from the African Diaspora

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) is committed to enhancing the quality of undergraduate STEM education and research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to broaden participation in the nation's STEM workforce. HBCU-UP seeks to work towards this goal by providing awards to develop, implement, and study innovative approaches for making dramatic improvements in the preparation and success of HBCU undergraduate students so that they may participate successfully in graduate programs and/or careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

This award to Clark Atlanta University has the potential to inform the HBCU Community about creating a framework for a data science curriculum. The proposed exploratory discovery workshop by the Clark Atlanta University Data Science Initiative "Enhancing Data Science Education by Leveraging Data Sets from the African Diaspora" aims to advance new knowledge and practice around culturally reflective data science and data science education.

It is expected that outputs of the workshop have the potential to impact data science education at the national level.

This project will convene an interdisciplinary community of experts at the intersection of data science, social equity, and undergraduate STEM education to achieve the project goals. At the three-day workshop, about 60 expert participants will actively collaborate to develop, test, and refine innovative undergraduate data science modules that incorporate social and racial justice.

The participants will contribute to the knowledge sharing by describing promising practices for developing course modules that focus on the African diaspora, identifying data sets appropriate for modules, providing recommendations on how to handle sensitive racial topics in the data science classroom, and determining tools and strategies for teaching culturally relevant data science. A project evaluation will include both formative and summative components that will provide feedback on the workshop activities as well as generate insights from the participants on how to enhance data science education through data sets on the African diaspora.

Following the workshop, findings and recommendations will be shared with the wider community through an open seminar, a conference report, a 2-page summary, a case studies publication, and conference presentations. This project has the potential to inform future research and collaboration around how to practice undergraduate data science education that explores topics of the African diaspora with the aim of improving data science education for all students.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.