Supporting communication and cooperation in learning : The case of Data Science Minor

Abstract: Both teaching and learning Data Science are hard and requireinstrumental support. In the present thesis report, I describe adesign intervention which was introduced to students and teachers ofthe Data Science Minor at Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg,Russia). The intervention is a code sharing tool which is integrated with the Virtual Learning Environment - a set of software that teachers and students use as a primary instrument in the educational process. The code sharing tool, titled Gist, enabled teachers and students to share code and other digital artefacts, e.g., reports,which are used in the education. More importantly, it became a basisof a new emerging platform for educational applications.