Teach ethics and responsibility early in the data science program and keep prerequisites minimal to enroll a diverse student group

Design · All designs
Evidence · no claims cited

Description

The RDS course requires only an introductory data science or computer science course, deliberately excluding machine learning as a prerequisite. "This is a deliberate choice that reflects our goals to (1) educate data science students on ethics and responsibility early in their program of study, and (2) to enroll a diverse group of students." The semester-long course is structured as six thematic modules combining case studies, algorithmic and statistical insights, and hands-on exercises with open-source datasets and software libraries.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

• Students are expected to have basic familiarity with the python programming language, which is used in labs and assignments.

Constraints

• The authors faced a lack of a textbook offering comprehensive coverage of RDS balancing case studies, social-science concepts, and statistical and algorithmic techniques, so the course has no required textbook.

Target Learners

• graduate and advanced undergraduate data science students, including first-year students

Learning Goals

• ethics and responsibility in data science
• algorithmic fairness, privacy, transparency, and interpretability

Claims

Related Designs

Examples

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Key Sources

• Lewis Armanda; Stoyanovich Julia. (2021). Teaching Responsible Data Science: Charting New Pedagogical Territory. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-021-00241-7

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	design
id	rds-course-early-ethics-design
title	Teach ethics and responsibility early in the data science program and keep prerequisites minimal to enroll a diverse student group
description	The RDS course requires only an introductory data science or computer science course, deliberately excluding machine learning as a prerequisite.
status	review
generated	by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-27
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — lewis-armanda-stoyanovich-julia-2021

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