Big Data and the Curriculum

This weekend I presented with a colleague at the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (MICS) in Cedar Falls, IA.  We presented a discussion on the need for big data to support not only our database courses but other computer science courses and our difficulties in obtaining a good set of data.  Our goal with big data in the curriculum is to collect a set of data that is large (thousands of records) complex (dozens of tables) and meaningful (the students understand the data).

Our computer information systems curriculum needs this large, complex, and meaningful data to support the inquiry based learning approach we wish to employ.  We want our students to be able to explore the data using newly acquired data retrieval and analysis skills and discover meaningful trends in the data.  This approach will increase our students' critical thinking skills and prepare them for the ever-increasing data rich environment they will work in.

I hope to see us apply this inquiry based learning approach with big data in the near future.  It should result in very engaging courses and allow our students to develop relevant and marketable skills.