Data Analysis with Python – Autumn 2019 final report

The course was organized as planned first time in period IV of Spring 2019 and second time as non-scheduled self-study version in Summer/Autumn 2019. Progress of the course has been reported in my previous blog until last Autumn. This blog will give the final results after the completion of the non-scheduled version in December.

By the time of writing the previous blog, only 18 students had graduated from the course, but there were many heading for the December project deadline. Another update is that we added a new project option on fossil data analysis to complement the previous ones on biological sequence analysis and medical regression analysis.

In the end, 75 students completed this self-study version, receiving 5 ECTS mark from the Open University. The final statistics of the course assignments are as follows: 781 students finished at least one assignment in the TMC system, 421 proceeded to part 2, 303 to part 3, 239 to part 4, 207 to part 5, and 164 to part 6. 138 students passed all parts of the TMC assignments (at least 80% done on each part) and received a certificate of having conducted the 4 ECTS massive open online part of the course. That is, nearly half of those who passed the TMC assignments also conducted the project and exam to receive the official study credits.

Feedback was gathered through the Open University questionnaire (see summary statistics in the course page / feedback section). There were plenty of constructive comments pointing places for improvement and quite a few students reported that they were very satisfied with the course content, mentioning they learned a lot.

We are having a scheduled version of the course again in Period IV, 2020. After this the plan is to have the course offered only as a non-scheduled self-study version. Hopefully, we find new resources (especially a committed teacher) to update and maintain the course material.