Examining Methods in Basic Information Education for Liberal Arts Students: Towards Improving Math and AI/Data Science

Abstract

The government of Japan decided to educate data science for all undergraduate students from 2025. However, data science education requires basic IT skills, such as using PCs, office software, and the web prior to programming or mathematical modeling. Furthermore, basic IT skills course requires a large amount of human and time resources due to the differences of students' skill acquisition status and the fact that it is a practice-based education. Therefore, this study verified the educational effects and HR cost for each of methodologies, such as flipped classrooms and e-learning using various questionnaire data. In conclusion, we found the following results. Online classes are highly effective in education, but they reduce students' satisfaction. Reducing teachers' workload by introducing flipped classrooms does not decrease the educational effect. In addition, the increase in the number of students per class does not affect educational efficiency.