Rising to the Challenge: Helping Universities Prepare the AI Generation

We have all heard it and experienced it: Data is the fuel of the twenty-first century economy. From entertainment to manufacturing to healthcare, AI is helping redefine how businesses and other organizations operate. At the same time, lack of AI skills remains one of the top barriers for adoption. Universities and higher education institutions are rising to meet current and future demands for skills, but they are all facing different challenges as they try to integrate AI into their programs.

At IBM, we are partnering with universities to help them overcome the challenges. What we have heard in our decades of partnering with academia, is that developing a new AI program or even adding AI to existing programs, has proven to be a complex and slow task. Developing new curricula as well as preparing professors is expensive and time consuming; connecting with industry to ensure students are ready to apply their knowledge to real world problems is not a straightforward endeavor, and working side-by-side with the best research organizations requires alignment of objectives and strategies.

Accelerating the adoption of AI in universities

To help accelerate the next generation of data and AI savvy workforce, IBM collaborated with universities to develop a program to help educational institutions accelerate the teaching and adoption of AI. The program includes a set of customizable components that they can select from, depending on the specific objectives and needs they have for Data Science and AI. These components include curriculum resources such as IBM Skills Academy and OpenDS4All; access to Data Science Software Tools for professors and students; access to speakers and thought leaders via University Guest Lectures and connection with research via IBM Global University Program Awards and the IBM Research Frontiers Institute; as well as visibility to internships and job opportunities.

“Universities have been receptive of the program for two reasons: the first one is that it is customizable, and they can pick and choose the elements that are going to help them meet their objectives. The second one is that OpenDS4All and the IBM Skills Academy give them a solid foundation to jump start or complement existing programs”, says Andre de Waal, OpenDs4All Technical Steering Committee Leader and an expert in curriculum development and adoption.

Curriculum is the cornerstone and differentiator of any academic program. Here is where IBM took a unique and new approach that is gaining ground: using Open Source Principles to develop educational materials for Data Science and Machine Learning.

• Aria Chernick Associate Professor of the Practice at the Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative and the Social Science Research Institute at Duke University on the principles of open source education

The idea behind the open-source project, OpenDS4All, is to provide Data Science and Machine Learning curriculum building blocks that any learning program — academic, commercial, professional — can incorporate. Not only is it open for anyone to use, it is open for anyone to contribute back.

Built for professors, by professors, this project was launched in 2019 as part of the Linux Foundation and has taken off in 2020.

So far, University of Pennsylvania, Oklahoma State University, Kennesaw State University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Imperial College London are participating and using the OpenDS4All project to accelerate their AI programs.

Dr. Jennifer Lewis Priestley, Professor of Statistics and Data Science, Analytics and Data Science Institute, Kennesaw State University was one of the first professors to take advantage of OpenDS4All. “The first things I downloaded and brought into my class was the ethics module. Faculty can pick and choose what they want and they don’t have to do it in any particular order”.

One of the other elements of the program that Universities have taken advantage of is University Guest Lectures. A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Hamza Agli, an applied scientist consultant from the IBM Data Science Elite team, held a Data Science Bootcamp in the Dyson School of Design Engineering at the Imperial College in London (MEng). Dr. Dieckmann, Teaching Fellow of Innovation Design Engineering, Imperial College, Dyson School of Design Engineering commented: “The Data Science Module has been part of the MEng curriculum for several years; however, this was the first time that students engaged with this topic through hands-on challenges. We already have requests for a follow up session and looking forward for more.”

As universities around the world continue to work to introduce AI into their programs, they can pick and choose from all the different elements of the AI for Academia program to address their very specific needs and objectives. This include access for professors and their students to leading IBM products for data science and machine learning, like Watson Studio. IBM’s AI portfolio is based on opens source, like Jupyter Notebooks. IBM then builds in enterprise features for scale, collaboration, and security along with leading edge automation such as AutoAI, that helps students from non-technical programs learn and apply data science. IBM’s goal is making data science and AI accessible to all, so important for the next generation in the workforce.

If you are from a university and are interested in additional details or would like to be contacted by an expert in these programs, please visit the AI for Academia website.

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