General education and developing data science competences

The evolution of understanding of what represents “literacy” accelerated in the era of computers, created a new division between “literate” and “illiterate” – a digital divide. The current stage of those challenges is marked by the term “Big Data” and “Data science” is the trans-disciplinary field to address them.

The classical way of curriculum development doesn’t provide suitable educational models to train trans-disciplines. On the other side, competences in Data Science are recognized as essential for the success in every professional area for 21st century. As a result almost every university is trying to address this problem by designing different programs at the bachelor or master level, covering the three major categories of required skills – hard, soft and analytical.

Currently, the American University in Bulgaria is working on the reform of General Education. Training Data Science literacy is among the key objectives targeted by this reform. Ideas of how to include such training within the General Education framework will be presented and discussed. The idea is based on switching from course-based toward competence-based curriculum, emphasizing across-curriculum efforts and graduate developing skills.