A picture of Kathi Fisler.

Kathi Fisler

Kathi Fisler is a Research Professor of Computer Science at Brown University and co-director of Bootstrap, an outreach program that integrates computing and data science into existing classes in middle- and high-schools.

@kathifisler

https://cs.brown.edu/~kfisler/

Data-Centricity: Rethinking Introductory Computing to Support Data Science

By Kathi Fisler

On a growing number of campuses, data science programs offer introductory courses that include a non-trivial amount of programming. The content of such courses overlaps that of traditional computer science introductory courses, but neither course subsumes the other. This talk argues that a common introductory course that covers both data science and data structures supports students and provides curricular flexibility, while also bringing social impacts of computing into the early curriculum. We'll discuss both the design and implementation of such a course, with particular focus on programming language features that support it.