Curriculum Reform in Big Data Education at Applied Technical Colleges and Universities in China

With the boom in data science, big data education has received increasing attention from all kinds of colleges and universities in China, and many of them are in a rush to offer big data education. This paper first analyzes the major areas of big data capability training and the Chinese market needs for various kinds of data science talent. Then, it discusses the curriculum design process for the “Data Science & Big Data Technology” bachelor’s degree program, and summarizes some detailed approaches to improving teaching experiments. Finally, this paper proposes a graduating student profile for big data education at applied technical colleges and universities in China. The authors’ main ideas include that, at the applied technical colleges and universities, a) a suitable graduating student orientation should be determined as the big data talent needs are hierarchical; b) the redesigned curriculum in big data education should provide students more practical capabilities and knowledge; c) the teaching of the existing mainstream big data technologies and tools should be significant components in the syllabi of big data education.