2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

It is important to provide non-computing majors with hands-on experience when teaching them data science topics. Meanwhile, it is challenging since those students typically have limited or no computing background. This paper describes the design of the hands-on assignments in an entry-level data science course for non-computing majors. It contains two components: one with the traditional format of hands-on experience, i.e., writing Python code with the support of in-class demos to complete various data science tasks; another one which is more accessible for non-computing majors, i.e., performing in-depth data manipulation and analysis tasks with the assistance of a web-based data science platform where little or no programming is required. This paper describes some sample assignments for the two components. Data sets in various domains are used to diversify the types and requirements of those tasks. This paper then describes the assessment result of the two types of hands-on assignments and compares how effectively they help students understand data science topics and improve students' interests in data science and computer science.