The Coleridge Initiative’s Applied Data Analytics (ADA) training programs build workforce capacity by enhancing data literacy and technical skills through rigorous and modern methods of analysis. To improve evidence-based decision-making skills, participants are trained in developing, interpreting, and communicating value-based outcomes.

Applied Data Analytics Training Programs

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The Coleridge Initiative’s Applied Data Analytics (ADA) training programs build capacity by enhancing data literacy and technical skills through rigorous and modern methods of analysis. To improve evidence-based decision-making skills, participants are trained in developing, interpreting, and communicating value-based outcomes. The ADA training offers a unique opportunity, particularly for government agency staff, as courses are developed through the direct use of restricted-use microdata to answer real, present policy questions they face and introduce practical, open-source tools that can be used after training ends. In the program, participants have the opportunity to imagine new products to influence evidence-based policymaking, develop new networks across jurisdictions, and professional development to improve workforce capacity.

Participants are trained to work in the award-winning Administrative Data Research Facility (ADRF) which securely hosts data in a cloud environment that allows approved participants to work with restricted-use data. Formally developed in 2017, the ADA training programs have expanded to both the federal and state level with the goals of providing safe access to data and building workforce capacity for data analysis. 

Overview

The ADA trainings are built around domain- and skill-specific topics developed with the data providers and content collaborators. The trainings are delivered through a combination of guided self-learning, lectures, and team-based project work. A dedicated external team lead helps guide each team through their project. Participants are expected to devote 2-4 hours per week on the training course; two hours on non-lecture weeks and 4 hours otherwise.

Curriculum

Participants receive an introduction to relevant programming languages and concepts that will be covered in the Analytical Training portion of the training program using public data in the ADRF. Instruction is flipped, as participants are invited to weekly check-ins with an instructor to discuss each unit’s materials. 

Using restricted-use microdata, participants are introduced to data science concepts such as project scoping, data exploration, measurement, data visualization, and conceptual approaches to analysis. Also discussed are concepts of machine learning, inference and imputation, privacy, confidentiality and ethics. 

Participants work in their groups to finalize their outputs, export their findings from the ADRF, and present their research in a final presentation and reports. 

Highlighted Projects

This project focused on New Jersey's Community College Opportunity Grant (CCOG) and the financial impact of gaining a Bachelor's Degree before entering the workforce.

What is the impact of Registered Apprenticeship on individual wage? What role does completion, gender, race/ethnicity, age, location of work and education have on wages?

Who experienced multiple spells of unemployment during the pandemic?

The Applied Data Analytics training has its origins in a 2013 request from the U.S. Census Bureau to develop a course to build data skills among staff. Coleridge Initiative co-founder and Chief Scientist, Julia Lane, structured the course with the goal of training individuals to be data scientists—learning through hands-on work with data to solve a real-world problem.

The success of these initial classes led course materials to be developed into a textbook, Big Data and Social Science: A Practical Guide to Methods and Tools, which has been rated in the top 15 of the 100 best data science books. 

Since these origin courses, the Coleridge Initiative’s Applied Data Analytics training was formally developed in 2017 as a professional development program for government agency staff, expanded to both the federal and state level, with the goals of providing safe access to data and building workforce capacity for data analysis. Learning is facilitated through a new platform, the Administrative Data Research Facility (ADRF). The ADRF is a secure cloud-based computing platform, established by the U.S. Census Bureau with funding from the Office of Management and Budget, that enables collaboration and documentation for data that agencies own. Through the ADRF, agency staff complete the Applied Data Analytics training while learning to use and understand their own data, develop new data products for their agencies, and to establish new networks across agencies and geographies to facilitate collaboration in addressing shared policy challenges.

Since 2017, the Coleridge Initiative has partnered with over a dozen top universities and organizations to deliver the Applied Data Analytics trainings. The training has also been sponsored by non-profit and government organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, Ascendium, and the United States Department of Labor.

History

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