CyberTraining: CIU: Preparing the Public Sector Research Workforce to Impact Communities through Data Science

研究人员、公民、政府机构和教育工作者之间共享数据的能力为具有重大现实影响的新研究合作创造了潜力。然而，城市往往没有准备好利用网络基础设施来支持影响其公民和社区的研究，研究人员往往无法获得或了解与社区相关的数据和问题。该项目为面对面和在线课程开发创新和可扩展的教学材料，以提高数据科学素养，满足公共部门对计算和数据科学专家的新兴需求。这些材料强调社区作出知情决定所需的数据类型（例如，关于土地使用、选民服务请求和犯罪统计的行政数据），并将其应用于社区伙伴提出的紧迫问题，为学习提供真实的环境。该项目利用密歇根大学信息学院的公民互动设计计划和大学间政治和社会研究联盟（ICPSR）的社会研究定量方法暑期课程，培训本科生，研究生和公共部门研究人员收集，提取，清理，注释和分析政府组织生成和使用的数据。正如NSF的使命所述，该项目服务于国家利益：促进科学进步;促进国家健康、繁荣和福利;使城市能够进行改善社区的研究，并使课程中使用的教学材料和数据可供其他感兴趣的教育工作者、社区和公民使用。该项目通过开发和提供三种教学活动来解决科学和工程研究人员发展的瓶颈：（a）基于项目的课程，学生直接与密歇根社区合作设计网络基础设施工具，以及（B）两个大规模的开放式在线课程（MOOC），学生学习公共部门工作的数据科学基础知识。这些课程提供可扩展的培训和教育计划，以增加利用行政数据的公共部门的网络基础设施支持的研究。课程开发发生在整个中西部城市的教育工作者和社区合作伙伴之间的合作，以确保主题和受众的多样性，及时性，相关性和直接应用。这种对真实的数据的依赖和对社区问题的直接应用是数据科学教学中的一种新方法。尽管是虚拟提供的，但MOOC保留了与真实的利益相关者合作进行有意义项目的教学优势。所有三门课程将在项目过程中至少提供和评估一次，课程材料将通过密歇根大学公开提供。s信息学院，ICPSR和其他论坛（例如，该大学的机构知识库，深蓝）的最大影响。长期目标是扩大研究人员和社区之间的参与，利用先进的网络基础设施支持公共部门STEM研究，并为在线，动态，个性化课程和认证的基础设施做出贡献。通过与中西部大数据中心的合作，该项目确保中西部的社区能够获得劳动力发展的资源，并有机会改进教育材料，以满足他们现在和未来的特定需求。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The ability to share data among researchers, citizens, government agencies, and educators creates potential for new research collaborations with significant real-world impact. However, cities are often unprepared to use cyberinfrastructure to support research that would impact their citizens and communities, and researchers often do not have access to or awareness of the kinds of data and questions that are relevant for communities. This project develops innovative and scalable instructional materials, for both in-person and online courses, to increase data science literacy to meet the public sector's emerging needs for experts in computational and data science. The materials emphasize the types of data necessary for communities to make informed decisions (e.g., administrative data on land use, constituent service requests, and crime statistics) and applies them to pressing issues presented by community partners, providing a real-world context for learning. The project leverages the University of Michigan School of Information's Citizen Interaction Design program and the Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) to train undergraduate students, graduate students, and public sector researchers in collecting, extracting, cleaning, annotating, and analyzing data generated and used by government organizations. The project serves the national interest, as stated by NSF's mission: to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; by enabling cities to conduct research that improves their communities and making the instructional materials and data used in the courses available for use by other interested educators, communities, and citizens. The project addresses bottlenecks in scientific and engineering research workforce development by developing and offering three instructional activities: (a) a project-based course in which students work directly with Michigan communities to design cyberinfrastructure tools, and (b) two massive, open online courses (MOOCs) in which students learn the fundamentals of data science for work in the public sector. These courses provide scalable training and education programs to increase cyberinfrastructure-enabled research in the public sector that leverages administrative data. Course development occurs in collaboration between educators and community partners in cities throughout the Midwest, in order to ensure diversity of topics and audiences, timeliness, relevance, and direct application. This reliance on real data and immediate application to community issues is a novel approach in data science instruction. Despite being offered virtually, the MOOCs retain the pedagogical benefits of working on meaningful projects with real stakeholders. All three courses will be offered and evaluated at least once over the course of the project, and the course materials will be made publicly available through the University of Michigan?s School of Information, ICPSR, and other forums (e.g., the University's institutional repository, Deep Blue) for maximum impact. The long-term goals are to broaden engagement between researchers and communities to leverage advanced cyberinfrastructure to support public sector STEM research and to contribute to the infrastructure for online, dynamic, personalized lessons and certifications. Through partnership with the Midwest Big Data Hub, the project ensures that communities in the Midwest have access to resources for workforce development and opportunities to refine educational materials to serve their specific needs now and in the future.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.