Data Culture: New Times Require New Solutions
The Data Culture Project, a module of the educational programme at HSE University, was launched seven years ago. At that time, it was already clear that the ability to work with data had become an essential skill for any professional, regardless of their field. Thousands of students have since participated in the project's courses, and now it has expanded to all HSE campuses. In 2024, a total of 26,903 students passed independent exams on digital skills. Several updates to the course are planned for the upcoming academic year. In this article, we discuss the changes expected for the Data Culture Project.
Today, student training in this module includes not only learning about digital literacy and basic programming but also mastering more advanced topics such as machine learning, text analysis, and neural network usage for educational, research, and professional purposes.
Adapting Courses to Meet Modern Requirements
The project team is committed to keeping students informed about the latest trends and enabling them to effectively apply their knowledge in practice. To this end, updates to several Data Culture courses are planned for the upcoming academic year. For example, the digital literacy course will incorporate sections on generative artificial intelligence and prompt engineering. Additionally, the data analysis course will be expanded to introduce students to new topics related to the use of artificial intelligence. This will help students understand the principles of working with data and learn to apply them to professional tasks. The course will be delivered in the form of an online textbook, as this method has proven effective in preparing for independent exams.
Valeria Bozhenova, Curriculum Coordinator on Digital Literacy, Senior Lecturer in the Big Data and Information Retrieval School, Faculty of Computer Science, HSE University
‘In the face of rapid technological change, the course will become more adaptive and aligned with modern requirements. This includes a focus on Russian online services and software, with special attention given to generative systems (such as ChatGPT and its analogues) and prompt engineering. It is crucial to understand the benefits of using these tools, as well as their inherent limitations and drawbacks.’
Individual Learning Trajectories
Individualisation and freedom of choice in education are important aspects of HSE’s educational policy. Students are able to choose minors, specialisations, and optional courses, creating their own study plan based on their preferences. Starting next year, students will also have the option to select topics and methods that interest them within the data analysis course. This includes working with pre-trained neural networks, analysing text data, and conducting product analytics.
The applied neural networks course is designed for students of all educational programmes. It will teach students how to work with generative, text, and audio models; master the principles of neural networks and the basics of machine learning; learn about text cluster analysis as well as how to convert audio recordings into text and perform topic modeling.
The text data analysis course will provide students in the humanities with an opportunity to learn about digital methods used by philologists, linguists, cultural scholars, Asian studies specialists, art historians, and philosophers. The course is intended for students who have no prior experience with programming.
Daria Kasyanenko, Data Culture Project Expert, Senior Lecturer in the Big Data and Information Retrieval School, Faculty of Computer Science, HSE University
‘The advanced course on the basics of Python programming will provide tools for anyone working with text (downloading, processing, analysing it). We will learn how to programmatically download and process large volumes of text data, analyse parts of speech, remove stop words, correct spelling errors, work with both English and Russian texts, and visualise and interpret the results obtained.’
See also:
More than 10,000 HSE Students Pass Digital Skills Exam
This year, for the first time, all first-year students took independent exams as part of the university-wide Data Culture project. These exams checked the level of digital literacy, algorithmic thinking and programming, as well as data analysis and artificial intelligence skills. HSE students and Head of the Data Culture project Olga Podolskaya spoke about the exams and preparation process.
Data Culture: HSE Will Teach All Its Students to Work with Data
HSE will launch a new project called Data Culture in September 2017. Starting their very first year, HSE bachelor’s students will learn to work with data, and students in a number of programmes will also become familiarised with methods of machine-learning and artificial intelligence.