Prof. Madhavan Mukund

Chennai Mathematical Institute

Prof. G. Venkatesh

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

Title of the talk:

Teaching computational thinking to aspiring data scientists

Abstract :

When IIT Madras decided to launch an online BSc programme in Programming and Data Science, one of the challenges was to teach programming at scale to students from diverse backgrounds. We decided to begin with a course on computational thinking before embarking on learning programming formally. We based the course on extracting useful information from concrete datasets -- students' report cards, shopping bills and paragraphs of text. Through this, we introduced computational thinking concepts -- iteration, variables and filtering -- and also explained how to express these concepts using flowcharts and pseudocode. Along the way, we also introduced data structures like lists and dictionaries to maintain and process information, and explained the use of abstractions like graphs and recursion to navigate complex relationships and hierarchical structures. An orthogonal challenge was to deliver this content in an engaging manner online. To simulate an interactive classroom discussion, we structured the lectures as a conversation between the two instructors. The datasets were printed on cards and several computations were executed by hand using these cards. The feedback from learners to this approach has been very positive.

About the speaker (Madhavan Mukund):

Madhavan Mukund studied at IIT Bombay and Aarhus University. He is presently Director of the Chennai Mathematical Institute, where he has been a faculty member since 1992. He has served as President of both the ACM India Council and the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. His main research area is formal verification. He is also passionate about CS education at all levels. He is part of ACM India's CSpathshala initiative to introduce computational thinking in schools. He has been the National Coordinator of the Indian Computing Olympiad since 2002. He teaches online courses on algorithms, programming and data structures for the NPTEL project of the Ministry of Education, Government of India, as well as the online BSc in Programming and Data Science offered by IIT Madras.

About the speaker (G. Venkatesh):

G Venkatesh studied at IIT Madras and TIFR Bombay. He is presently a Professor of Practice at IIT Madras where he has been teaching since 2014. He has been a faculty member at the Computer Science Department of IIT Bombay for 8 years, a visiting faculty member at IIM Bangalore for 3 years, and the Chief Technology Officer of Sasken Technologies Bangalore for nearly 20 years. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and the IETE. His passion for pedagogy innovation led him to found Mylspot Education Services in 2014. He is a co-founder of the Comsnets association which runs two premier international conferences in India. He serves on many government, industry, investor and academic committees and company boards. He teaches two courses in the online BSc in Programming and Data Science offered by IIT Madras.