New WiDS Next Gen Curriculum, Now Available

Women in Data Science (WiDS) Next Gen is pleased to release four data science lessons for secondary school students. These lessons can be used by secondary school teachers, student clubs, or WiDS ambassadors to engage students in discussion and activities to explore data science. WiDS Next Gen aims to inspire secondary school students to consider careers involving data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and related fields by introducing them to data science role models and their work. To receive the latest WiDS Next Gen materials, including these lessons, sign up here.

In partnership with youcubed, these lessons will also be made available as part of the youcubed data science high school course, providing additional tasks in the Grades 6-7 and 8-10 big ideas. The year-long high school course provided by youcubed introduces high school students to the main ideas in a series of project-based units. Students can develop their understanding of data analysis, bias and uncertainty, probability, modeling with data, and much more.
 
Each lesson includes a detailed lesson plan, slides, and a student handout to provide students with interesting and meaningful examples of how data science is applied in the real world across many fields of study. The lessons also provide accessible opportunities for students to engage with the concepts and ideas of data science work, and expose students to real people and role models in data science. 
 
The featured data scientists include:
Dr. Latanya Sweeney, Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology at Harvard University, and Founder and Director of the Data Privacy Lab, with a lesson focused on data privacy.
Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi, Assistant Professor at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES), with a lesson about data science in healthcare.
Dr. Megan Price, Executive Director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), with a lesson focused on data science and statistical modeling for use in human rights advocacy.
Dr. Fanny Chevalier, Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Statistics, with a lesson focused on data visualization. 
 
These WiDS Next Gen lessons do not assume that the teacher or the students have any prerequisite knowledge of data science. The lessons on data privacy, data visualization, and human rights also include an additional activity that engages students with programming in Google Colab. Even in these cases, the notebooks are well scaffolded to guide students through their use without requiring any previous knowledge of programming. 
 
Additional materials are in development, and will be released shortly. If you have questions or feedback about the WiDS Next Gen program, send us an email to widsnextgen@stanford.edu.
 
Special thanks to the WiDS Next Gen curriculum team made up of members of the WiDS Next Gen committee, for creating these lessons: Tanya LaMar, Audrey Acken, Vida Kamaraju, Elena Martinez, Anoushka Shrivastava, Janvi Subramanyan, Corinn Tiffany, and Bianca Yu.