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Research Recap 2024

CourseKata looks back on a successful and inspiring 2024! From working hard towards addressing equity in education to hosting DREAM 2024 and DataFest, fostering collaboration, and going international with our research, it’s been a year of impact and innovation. Check out our 2024 Research Highlights

DREAM 2024: Insights and Innovations in Data Science Education Research

On November 14, 2024, CourseKata’s research community gathered for DREAM 2024, the second annual workshop dedicated to advancing research and fostering collaboration in statistics and data science education. Building on the momentum of last year’s inaugural event, DREAM 2024 featured lightning talks, lively discussions, and an atmosphere brimming with energy as each team presented findings and new projects to drive meaningful, large-scale impact. Here are some highlights and key takeaways!

Lightning Talks: Sparking Ideas and Advancing Research

The heart of DREAM 2024 was its lightning talks, where research teams presented data uncovering key challenges and promising solutions for statistics and data science education. This year, we had five presentations representing five different institutions:

High School Students’ Perceptions of R Programming, Matt Jackson, PhD, California State University, Los Angeles.

This equity-focused study explored how high school students’ attitudes toward R programming shifted during a statistics and data science course. While confidence increased and anxiety decreased overall, smaller improvements among racially marginalized students highlight areas for further equity-focused research.

Assessing GPT-4’s Understanding of ‘Data = Model + Error’, Alice Xu, UCLA.

By comparing GPT-4’s understanding to that of students, this research revealed parallels in misconceptions and highlighted the potential of AI as a tool for identifying and addressing learning gaps.

Tracking Students’ Readiness to Learn, Shawn Schwartz, Stanford University.

This talk explored how attentional states, measured through digital learning materials and laboratory tasks, influence students’ ability to engage with and retain new information over time.

How Mindset Influences Learning Outcomes, Kristine Zheng, Stanford University.

Focusing on mindset as a critical factor in student success, this randomized control trial on the CourseKata platform hopes to provide insights into how perceptions of learning as an opportunity versus an assessment of ability shape outcomes in statistics and data science courses.

Plotwise: Facilitating Connection-Making with Interactive Visualizations, Stacy Shaw, Icy Zhang, & Lane Harrison, WPI & University of Wisconsin.

Plotwise—a tool designed to help students dynamically connect statistical representations—generated excitement about its potential to transform how learners understand statistical concepts and how researchers gather data from student interactions with data visualizations.

Key Themes From Discussions

Check out our CourseKata blogpost to learn more about the key themes that arose from the discussions!

Looking Ahead

As we reflect on the success of DREAM 2024, we’re reminded of the power of collaboration and innovation in advancing education. The insights shared during this event will undoubtedly shape the next generation of tools, curricula, and research aimed at equipping students with the skills they need to navigate a data-driven world.

Thank you to all who joined us for DREAM 2024! Your contributions and engagement made this year’s event a resounding success. We look forward to continuing this journey together and hope to see you at DREAM 2025.

CourseKata at the International Conference on Motivation in Bern, Switzerland

Exciting news: CourseKata’s director of research, Dr. Claudia Sutter, is heading a symposium at the International Conference on Motivation & Emotion (ICM) at the University of Bern on Aug 30! It’s gonna be an international perspective on the “Situational Nature of Motivation and Emotions in Education.” Don’t miss this insightful panel!

Datafest 2024

In April and May of 2024, over 60 universities participated in the American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest, a celebration of data where teams of undergraduates worked tirelessly over a weekend to explore a large, complex data set from a secret source. This year, the secret data set was CourseKata’s anonymized student learning data involving 11 universities, 48 classes, and over 1600 students, which provided a rich resource for insights on introductory statistics, data science, and modeling!

Learn more about the student experience, the variety of projects showcased, and future directions that are not only informed by data but also by the perspectives of students as researcher on our CourseKata blogpost.

DREAM 2023 Reflection

Our inaugural DREAM 2023 workshop, which took place on November 2, was a big success. It served as a platform for (future) researchers to get together, learn more about ongoing research projects, and explore potential collaborations within the CourseKata researcher community. The event featured lightning talks by researchers representing 5 different institutions, making it a memorable and impactful gathering. We also launched our new coursekata researcher website, which serves the purpose of supporting and empowering researchers and students working with CourseKata data by providing (1) a central hub for all resources related to Coursekata research, (2) a platform for researchers to share out research findings and to highlight the diverse and innovative ways researchers have leveraged student data to enhance students’ experiences and to guide continuous improvement of the materials, and (3) networking and collaboration opportunities by making research more accessible and visible.

The lightning talk presenters played a pivotal role in the success of DREAM 2023. Their lightning talks provided in-depth insights into their respective research areas that all shared the common goal of using student data to either (a) improve students’ learning experiences and their attitudes towards statistics and data science - domains that are typically perceived as challenging and hard to learn, (b) support instructors in teaching that hard stuff, and (c) inform and enhance the learning materials. To further disseminate the findings of the lightning talks, we will be amplifying their work on our researcher website, again promoting the visibility and accessibility of CourseKata research.

The coursekata team will be working hard on thinking about our DREAM 2024 vision, where we can continue this journey. The road ahead is exciting, and we can’t wait to see where it leads us.

Check out our CourseKata blogpost to learn more about our DREAM 2023 event.