Higher Education Interventions for Preparing Undergraduate Students to Thrive in the Data Economy

Higher Education Interventions for Preparing Undergraduate Students to Thrive in the Data Economy

Data is now recognized as “a factor of production” to produce goods and services. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has accelerated the need for higher education interventions that effectively prepare students for success in the data economy workforce. The Data Economy Workforce is composed of people who collect, store, manage and analyze data as their primary activity, or as a relevant part of their activities. The Transdisciplinary Data Scholars Development Program at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida has designed a collection of curricular, co-curricular and experiential learning interventions with the overall goal of preparing students to thrive in the data economy. During the session, we will share designs of these higher education interventions including metacognition-promoting learning transactions, data economy teacher education, and mentored experiential learning of data investigations. Participants will have opportunities to identify and explore potential areas of collaboration for transforming STEM higher education.

Background and Significance

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has accelerated the “Digital Transformation” of the global higher education and workplace requiring information and commun ication technologies (ICT) facilitated remote work, remote education, remote learning and other remote activities. The COVID-19 accelerated irreversible digital transformations of employer operations have increased the data economy; defined as the production, distribution and consumption of digital data. The Data Economy Workforce is composed of people who collect, store, manage and analyze data as their primary activity, or as a relevant part of their activities [1]. Data is now recognized as “a factor of production” [2] to produce goods and services. Despite the growing data economy in 2020, the youth unemployment rate in the United States increased from 8% in January 2020 to 25% in July 2020 [3]. Clearly, there is an urgent need for strategies to best prepare U.S. teenagers and young adults for employment in the data economy. The COVID-19 pandemic related unemployment and shortage of qualified individuals for jobs in the data economy are pressing societa l needs that brings to the forefront the need for fundamental research on how to best prepare students at all levels of education with 21st Century Competencies. National consensus reports have recommended that academic institutions provide and evolve a range of educational pathways to prepare students for an array of data science roles in the workplace [4] and transferable competences [5]. There are connections between the 21st century competence domains (cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal) and data acumen (good judgment, use of tools responsibly and effectively) that are needed for eligibility for employment positions as well as success and productivity in the data economy. The challenges associated with the data economy are related to the challenges described for data science. The data challenges are in the dimensions of data flow (i.e., collection, storage, access, and movement), data analytics (i.e., modeling and simulation, statistical analysis, and visual a nalytics), and data curation (i.e., preservation, publication, security, description, and cleaning) [6]. Our innovation in higher education interventions is to provide learning experiences (interactions with learning environments) that lead to expertise (ability to predict actions) that can be applied in data culture and corporate culture, where culture is a set of shared beliefs, values and expected behaviors. 1. Wai, H.; Cheng, J.; LaFleur, M.; Rashid, H. Data Economy: Radical transformation or dystopia? Frontier Technology Quarterly 2019, 1-6. 2. Boullenois, C. China sets the rules for its new data economy Available online: https://technode.com/2020/08/04/china-sets-the-rules-for-its-new-data-economy/ (accessed on 10/30/2020). 3. Moebert, J. Youth unemployment pre and post COVID-19. Available online: https://www.dbresearch.com/servlet/reweb2.ReWEB?rwsite=RPS_EN-PROD&rwobj=ReDisplay.Start.class&document=PROD0000000000510246 (accessed on 10/1/20 20). 4. National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine. Data Science for Undergraduates: Opportunities and options; National Academies Press: Washington DC, 2018. 5. National Research Council. Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century; National Academies Press: 2012. 5. Ahalt, S.; Bedard, D.; Carsey, T.; Crabtree, J.; Green, K.; Jeffries, C.; Knowles, D.; Kum, H.; Lander, H.; Nassar, N. Establishing a national consortium for data science. National Consortium for Data Science 2012.

Results/Evidence of Effectiveness

The Date Economy Frontiers initiative is building on five years of experience with the Transdisciplinary Data Scholars Development Program (TDSDP, https://sites.google.com/a/cookman.edu/tdsdp/). In 2022, we designed and piloted an online 8-week Data Economy Experiential Learning program. We just completed year two of the Data Economy Experiential Learning program this summer with double participation from undergraduate students on campus. Additionally, we have designed the curriculum and associated course schedule for a Data Economy Frontiers undergraduate degree program.