Catching the wave: Big data in the classroom

Many diverse domains-in the sciences, engineering, healthcare, and homeland security-have been grappling with the analysis of “Big Data,” which has become shorthand to represent extremely large amounts of diverse types of data. A recent Gartner report predicts that around 4.4 million IT jobs globally will be created by 2015 to support Big Data, with 1.9 million of those jobs in the United States. Therefore, understanding approaches and techniques for handling and analyzing Big Data from diverse domains has become crucial for not only in computing but also engineering students. The mini-workshop will make use of active and collaborative learning exercises to introduce faculty in computer science, software engineering, and other disciplines to concepts and techniques involved in managing and analyzing Big Data. Approaches for incorporating Big Data into the engineering and computing curricula will also be presented.