Project of the University of Paderborn and the Telekom Foundation develops and explores didactical concepts and teaching materials about the topic of Data Science at school
Data-driven applications are increasingly entering different areas of the everyday life. Availability of big amount of data (Big Data) and the understanding if its different application and evaluation methods are fundamental. Besides manual processing, especially the procedure of machine learning, the so-called self-learning algorithms, are ascribed a significant role. Especially for high school students it is important to aquire certain skills in order to keep up with developments in the future working life. Therefore the usage of Big Data and Data Science in high schools is the topic of one of the projects at the University of Paderborn, which has been initiated by the German Telekom Foundation and which moves into the second stage. The aim of the first stage of "ProDaBi" was the development and testing of a Data Science Curriculum for the secondary level II. In the second stage the materials are being devolped further and units for the secondary level I are compiled.
"The project aims at an early aversion of data competences and its concrete application in practice. We develop teaching concepts and materials which are critically accompanied and tested by our cooperation partners, namely the high schools", explains Prof. Dr. Rolf Biehler from the didactics of Mathematics, who leads the project together with his colleague Prof. Dr. Carsten Schulte from the didactics of Computer Science. "In order to design one’s own living environment, the understanding of chances and risks of algorithms, artificial intelligence and big amount of data is essential. Therefore it is important that high school students aquire these competences within the teaching units", explains Schulte.
Data Competence through Hands–On Projects
The materials which are established in the project are, inter alia, about data competence and stochastic basics in small Hands-On projects. "High school students take the roles of date detectives", explains Biehler. In addition materials are developed, in order to cover concepts like machine learning and artificial intelligence within the lesson of the secondary level I and II accordingly. In-depth Data Science projects for the secondary level II with external partners from the areas of economy and administration help to practically apply artificial intelligence and machine learning with concrete tasks under real circumstances. The application and development of teaching materials are scientifically accompanied and evaluated.
Model of Paderborn: From Theory to Pratice
The activities have been carried out by project courses of the Reismann Gymnasium and Theodorianum in Paderborn. Biehler explains the application-orientated aspiration of the materials: "The practical part of our teaching concepts is enormously high. This is how the tought material can be memorized better. For example: during a project high school students have developed a model for a forecasting system, which calculates die number of available parking spots at the Liboriberg at a future point in time here in Paderborn as well as at the underground garage at Königsplatz. They used, inter alia, data of the traffic management system of the past 12 years, which have been divided into time, day of the week and months. With the help of artificial neuronal networks the data has been assessed and lead to a prediction accurancy for available parking spots of least 80 percent. The last step was to create a website, which shows available parking spots respectively for the the next 48 hours."
Until the end of the project in 2022 more cooperation partners shall join it. High schools that are interested can send an e-mail to prodabi(at)campus.upb(dot)de.
Website of the project: www.prodabi.de
