The kick-off meeting of the European Data Science Academy (EDSA) took place last week in Luxembourg. EDSA is a flagship project for the EC with regards to bridging the gap in the demands for data science skills in Europe. Apart from the project partners, the meeting was attended by the Project Officer for EDSA Carola Carstens, the Head of Unit Data Value Chain DG Connect Marta Nagy-Rothengass, the Deputy Head Unit Data Value Chain DG Connect Beatrice Covassi, as well as via teleconference from Brussels Heidi Cigan, Policy Analyst DG Communications Networks, Content, Technology Unit F4 European Semester and Knowledge Base.

The EDSA project will establish a virtuous learning production cycle whereby we: a) analyse the required sector specific skillsets for data analysts across the main industrial sectors in Europe; b) develop modular and adaptable data science curricula to meet these needs; and c) deliver training supported by multi-platform and multilingual learning resources based on our curricula. The curricula and learning resources will be continuously evaluated by pedagogical and data science experts during both development and deployment.

The project has a duration of 3 years and is coordinated by John Domingue (The Open University). The project consortium consists of 9 partners from 6 European countries (UK, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia, The Netherlands and France). Partners represent universities (OU, KTH, SOUTHAMPTON, TU/e), research institutions (FRAUNHOFER, JSI) and SMEs (ODI, IDEXLAB SAS, Persontyle Limited) covering different forms of organisations.

EDSA has already published its first Data Science MOOC in Coursera and is currently establishing collaborations with FutureLearn and edX in order to publish MOOCs of high quality addressing a wide range of data science skills.