Department of Computer Science, University of California, Davis, California, United States of America.
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2020 May 7;16(5):e1007695. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007695. eCollection 2020 May.
With increasing demand for training in data science, extracurricular or "ad hoc" education efforts have emerged to help individuals acquire relevant skills and expertise. Although extracurricular efforts already exist for many computationally intensive disciplines, their support of data science education has significantly helped in coping with the speed of innovation in data science practice and formal curricula. While the proliferation of ad hoc efforts is an indication of their popularity, less has been documented about the needs that they are designed to meet, the limitations that they face, and practical suggestions for holding successful efforts. To holistically understand the role of different ad hoc formats for data science, we surveyed organizers of ad hoc data science education efforts to understand how organizers perceived the events to have gone-including areas of strength and areas requiring growth. We also gathered recommendations from these past events for future organizers. Our results suggest that the perceived benefits of ad hoc efforts go beyond developing technical skills and may provide continued benefit in conjunction with formal curricula, which warrants further investigation. As increasing numbers of researchers from computational fields with a history of complex data become involved with ad hoc efforts to share their skills, the lessons learned that we extract from the surveys will provide concrete suggestions for the practitioner-leaders interested in creating, improving, and sustaining future efforts.
随着对数据科学培训需求的增加，课外或“临时”教育工作已经出现，以帮助个人获得相关技能和专业知识。虽然许多计算密集型学科已经有了课外工作，但它们对数据科学教育的支持在应对数据科学实践和正规课程创新速度方面起到了重要作用。虽然临时工作的大量涌现表明了它们的受欢迎程度，但关于它们旨在满足的需求、面临的限制以及成功举办这些工作的实际建议，记录的内容较少。为了全面了解不同临时格式在数据科学中的作用，我们调查了临时数据科学教育工作的组织者，以了解他们如何看待这些活动——包括优势领域和需要发展的领域。我们还从这些过去的活动中收集了对未来组织者的建议。我们的结果表明，临时工作的好处不仅在于培养技术技能，而且可能与正规课程一起提供持续的好处，这值得进一步研究。随着越来越多来自计算领域的、有处理复杂数据历史的研究人员参与到临时工作中，分享他们的技能，我们从调查中提取的经验教训将为有兴趣创建、改进和维持未来工作的从业者领导者提供具体建议。
