News about the DART Program
October 2023 Newsletter
Snapshot of Wave 2, Currently in Progress
The roughly 400 participants in the second wave of the DART are now more than half-way through the program!
A plurality of participants (150) are affiliated with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, but 5 other institutions have significant participation. We have 65 participants from Baylor College of Medicine, with the next largest cohorts from Duke University (36) and University of Pennsylvania (35). University of Arizona and Harvard also have notable participation numbers with 12 and 10, respectively.
Wave 2 has a global reach, with participants from institutions including Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College in Tanzania, Botho University in Botswana, University of Ruhuna in Sri Lanka, and National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.
Outcomes from Wave 1 – Significantly Improved Data Science Skills
The first wave of research subjects in the DART program finished in May and our preliminary analyses show participants had striking improvement in data science skills, including: constructing plots and tables to explore data, recording useful metadata, and overcoming challenges when they get stuck!
Overall, DART participants in our first wave reported a significant improvement in data science skills from pretest to posttest,t(47) = 10.18, p < .001. The graph below shows their answers to three of the pre/post test questions.
Expanding and Improving DART’s Offerings
We continue to add new modules to our offerings. Some of our newest module topics include Regular Expressions, Omics, Docker, Null Hypothesis Significance Testing, and Machine Learning. See the DART website for a complete list of all modules.
We are also constantly improving existing modules. You can follow our progress through the Issues in our public GitHub repository. Issues tagged as “user-reported” are based on responses from the feedback forms at the end of each module. If you submitted a suggestion in one of the over 1600 responses we have received so far, you can follow along and see how we are addressing it.
Turning DART into a Permanent Resource
We have been encouraged by our results so far and are now working to shape the program into a long-term resource for biomedical researchers to use and improve for years to come. Look for updates in the future about what this will look like!
Questions?
Want to learn more about DART, offer us feedback, or find out how to use our materials in your context? Email us at dart@chop.edu.