CourseKata FAQ

A: This is a set of curriculum materials (a set of online textbooks + in-class lessons) that are normally implemented synchronously. Asynchronous and self-study implementations are also possible.

A: The materials were first developed for in-person instruction but the underlying technology made it easy to transition to fully remote instruction.

A: The materials include highly interactive textbooks, delivered through your Learning Management System (LMS; e.g., Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, D2L). Students complete multiple choice and open-ended questions and do coding exercises as they read each page of the book and they receive feedback as soon as they submit their responses. The curriculum also includes materials to support in-class lessons (a jupyter notebook starter pack). Those materials are selected and published by teachers through the LMS, through which students can also submit their assignments.

A: CourseKata is not a single course but a set of textbooks appropriate for different courses. 

For a course using the high school AB textbook, the prerequisite math course should be Algebra I (or Integrated Math I) but many schools have enrolled students who have taken both Algebra I and Geometry (or IM1 and IM2). 

For a course using the high school ABC textbook, the prerequisite should be Algebra II (or Integrated Math II). This textbook can be used in a fourth year or advanced math course such as Statistics.

More advanced textbooks such as XCD or ABCD may be used in courses designed for dual enrollment credit, as an alternative to AP courses.

As long time educators we recognize that even students who have taken and passed prerequisite courses may not be comfortable or fluent with algebra. Those students should not be discouraged from using our materials. The course materials are designed with supports so that a diverse range of students can grow in their knowledge and fluency with algebraic notation. The curriculum includes a very gentle introduction to coding (in R) which acts as a bridge to mathematical notation. Students start off writing “word equations” to represent ideas that parallel the R code which parallels the mathematical notation.

A: Because data science is a highly interdisciplinary topic of study, there is a fair amount of reading involved -- more so than what you would find in a typical Algebra I or II course. Some students may be challenged by the reading demands of the course, but with support from their teachers the experience could help them develop stronger schema and skills to read non-fiction, scientific, and technical texts.

A: Yes! Critical thinking with math and data is an oft-touted goal but truly difficult to reach. CourseKata was not developed by mathematicians but instead by learning scientists who study how people learn math and science concepts such that they can flexibly transfer their knowledge across contexts. Also inherent in the learning materials is a way to improve them incrementally based on data from student learning, teacher observations/innovations, and scientific theories/experiments.

How do your administrators feel about the current non-Calculus math trajectories currently available to students who don’t want to go down that path? Steve Levitt (University of Chicago economist of Freakonomics fame), Jo Boaler (Stanford professor of math education), and others have argued for modernizing the math curriculum in a way that connects students to real mathematical skills that are in demand today. 

CourseKata materials take that charge to heart and introduce students, even those who feel as though they are not “math people,” to real tools that data scientists at Amazon and Netflix are using on a daily basis. They learn to use algebra in a way that connects with the mathematical models used to predict COVID19 hospitalizations, carbon emissions, and voting results. We’re most excited by the possibility that students who may have written themselves off from the STEM pipeline get a chance to re-imagine themselves as doing coding, data science, and research in a wide variety of fields that need their point of view, creativity, and energy.

A: Currently, one of our IB schools is using the course and offering it as an alternative course after Math 2. We are interested in working with an IB school or teacher to explore whether our materials could be a good fit for the IB conceptualization of Math Applications and Interpretations.  We have several example projects (and are embarking on developing a whole set of projects) that may be modified for more independent exploration and can serve as performance assessments for investigational, problem-solving, collaboration, and modeling skills. These projects are not exclusively for IB schools but may be particularly relevant for them.

A: A subset of the materials can be offered for a term rather than for a full year course, and we’re happy to provide guidance on how to make the most of a single term. 

We also have a shorter textbook called Algebra + Data Science designed to offer students a half-year of data science to get them excited about taking Algebra II or Statistics courses.

A: Yes, but as with all plans to teach, we recommend that the teacher participate in a study group before beginning.

A: We highly recommend that each teacher who will be offering a course that uses the materials participate in one of our study groups.  Study groups typically meet for 7, 1-hour sessions, during which we conduct a sample lesson on chapters 1-6 of the book, with teachers completing the materials as if they are students. In this way we’re able to introduce teachers to the materials, content, and pedagogy. In addition, during the school year we hold “office hours” Monday through Friday, through which we’re available on Zoom for just-in-time support. Check out our calendar for times and links.

A: Yes, most of our teachers have little to no experience in data science and some of our teachers have never taught statistics before teaching this course. Many of them took one statistics course during their undergraduate career long ago and that’s about the extent of their statistics experience. All of these teachers have said that they felt well-supported to pilot the course.

Even teachers who have experience teaching statistics often have no experience with R -- or even coding in general. That’s OK! You’ll get the experience you need from the materials themselves and from participating in a study group. Of course, if you have experience, you’ll be able to put it to good use.

A: You might find these resources useful: