Thirteenth International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract

Keypath Education Australia is an OPM collaborating with eight university partners across Australia. We are experts at building modern data science courses. However, data science is a notoriously complex subject to build. Whilst digging into the complexities of representing Deep Learning principles in a meaningful way, we realised something fundamental is often overlooked: the human element. This paper draws on a partnership between Keypath Australia and James Cook University, over a three-month data science course build. Having a background in teaching Literature, I was unprepared for the complexities building data science, however, through my experience in teaching narrative, I realised that data tells a story, in its own language, of how we operate in the world, what are needs are, and how we go about meeting them. This led to the development of an innovative approach to data science building. To strip it back. We cross-referenced how students learn in humanities disciplines – through narrative progression that leads to emotional connection and empathy with the material. We realised we needed context and a narrative that would tie the otherwise disparate elements of data science together, in a way that would evoke empathy, and therefore engagement, with the students. We needed an extended case- study based narrative running through the entire subject content. This paper presents the challenges, successes and resistance of building narrative context, and empathetically engaging content, within a subject that is often considered as purely technical and separate from such considerations.