CourseKata Statistics and Data Science is an innovative interactive online textbook for teaching introductory statistics and data science in colleges, universities, and high schools. Part of CourseKata’s Better Book Project, we are leveraging research and student data to guide continuous improvement of online learning resources.

School districts and their high schools across the country are rethinking and redesigning their math pathways for students to be more engaging and more aligned with student interest rather than one “rigorous” math pathway to Calculus and default courses for students not on that track. The idea is to offer parallel college preparation paths that offer branching alternatives and options of equal rigor. Data Science provides just that kind of option for schools and their students.

The University of California recently released new guidance to districts and schools for the math requirements under their a-g course framework that emphasizes the use of Statistics and Data Science as approved advanced math courses. Other national leaders have made similar calls to action around offering math courses that emphasize data science and data fluency – skills that are in most demand in the workplace and society post high school and college.

My own personal opinion is that there are few things more valuable in the modern world than “data fluency.” By that, I mean a basic comfort with data; an understanding of the difference between correlation and causality; the ability to evaluate claims that others make with data; maybe even to take a pile of data and make some sense out of it. Yet, most high-school students are barely exposed to data. Only 10 percent of high school students take a statistics class — and even most statistics courses are primarily theoretical rather than requiring students to get their hands dirty with data.

Steven Levitt, Freakonomics Radio, Ep. 391, October 2, 2019

Highly Interactive Student Experience

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CourseKata’s online textbook includes more than 1200 formative assessment questions, engaging students in active learning throughout. Students learn to program and analyze data using R, a standard open-source programming language for data science. R exercises are interleaved throughout the online book, giving students opportunities to continually practice applying the concepts they are learning. 

Richly Informative Teacher Tools

Our teacher interface gives real-time access to students’ thinking and progress through the book. CourseKata’s seamless integration of Jupyter Notebooks provides a means of structuring in-class activities, sharing new data sets, and managing authentic assessments and student projects.

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The Practicing Connections Approach

CourseKata is based on the practicing connections hypothesis: Students continually practice making connections between core concepts, representations, and the world of data analysis. These connections result in deep understanding and transferable knowledge.

Statistical Modeling at the Core

CourseKata’s online book is organized around the concept of statistical modeling and the practice of data analysis: exploring variation, modeling variation, and evaluating models. 

Articulation 

CourseKata Statistics and Data Science is being utilized in multiple ways, including as an 11th or 12th grade math course or simply a more engaging way to teach a traditional statistics course. Pioneering districts are using CourseKata as an anchor to redesign math pathways across the district, where Statistics and Data Science can be a branch: either as a two year sequence after Geometry or Math 2, as a third year course that could lead to pre-Calculus, AP Statistics, or back to Algebra, or as a fourth year math option for students that better matches their interests.

Professional Development & Support

CourseKata provides extensive professional development before and during the implementation of the course. Even teachers with little or no background in R or data science – and this describes most of our teachers – report feeling well-prepared and supported as they implement the course for the first time. In fact, learning to teach the CourseKata course is an ideal way for teachers to get introduced to the world of modern statistics and data science. Before teachers are scheduled to teach, they participate in a study group coupled with asynchronous homework. Once instructors begin to teach the course, the CourseKata team provides daily Zoom office hours where like-minded instructors can share their joys and concerns, problem solve, and support one another.