Building Confidence, Achieving Equity: A Call to Action for Open Source Communities

Training for data skills is more critical now than ever before. In the past decade, we’ve seen the creation of certification and graduate programs for data science, as well as a plethora of interactive, self-paced online learning platforms. Today’s learners are often learning on the job and need the flexibility of short, or self-paced learning experiences. Research results, however, stress the importance of guided instruction and learner-instructor interaction.

Building confidence to work with data requires a distinctive approach. Combining the power of guided instruction with the flexibility of short, focused learning experiences has the potential to achieve equity among open source community practitioners.

This talk explores factors that have increased skills and confidence coding practices. Implications and growth opportunities for building confidence and achieving equity and open source are also explored.