SPIDAS project: Introduction

The everyday use of digital technologies is creating vast reservoirs of data. This data has huge but largely untapped, potential. It could be used to transform public services, promote sustainability and enhance quality of life. Corporate capacity to understand data has become so central to competitive advantage that ‘big data’ has been termed ‘the ‘new oil’ that will fuel our economy in the coming decades’.

But it is useless if we don’t have the skills and creativity to turn it into insight and action. The SPIDAS project will innovate and extend best practice in the teaching of data analytics through student-centred, problem-based learning, focusing on the impacts of weather and climate change. We will explore the state-of-the-art before developing and testing new materials and new cross-curricula approaches.

The following three outputs will be produced by the end of SPIDAS project in 2020:

  • IO1 State of art review – The State of the Art Reviews will be a general report in the teaching of DA and a series of three written reports, one for each partner country, describing innovative and effective practices relating to the teaching of data analytics in school age education. The State of the Art reports will describe the context for innovative practice in each partner country e.g. differences in compulsory learning or levels of uptake in relevant subjects (Maths / ICT), gender participation in these subjects and the extent to which data analytics skills (e.g. statistics, data presentation, coding) are covered in these curriculum areas.
  • IO2 Pilot Project Evaluations – This Output will consist of a series of four Evaluation Reports, based on the work of participating schools. The pilot project evaluation reports will be produced to a common framework, using common tools and methods, focused on agreed aims and learning outcomes.
  • IO3 SPIDAS – Data Analytics Toolkit – The SPIDAS Toolkit will be an on-line resource that will enable schools across the EU to develop their data analytics projects building on our own examination of the state-of the-art and findings emerging from the pilot projects.

 

This is a project led by Exeter University (UK), Universidad de Lleida (Spain), and Pamukkale Universitesi (Turkey). 

It is funded by the ERASMUS + programme, in the “Strategic partnerships in the fields of School Education” funding sub-programme.

Erasmus + is the European programme in the areas of education, training, youth and sport for 2014-2020. Erasmus + is the unique programme which aims at promoting labour perspectives and personal development, as well as at helping our education, training and youth systems promote training which will empower people with the skills needed for the current and future working market and society as a whole. In the UK for School Education the national agency co-ordinately managing of the Erasmus+ Programme is the British Council.