MachineLearnAthon: An Action-Oriented Machine Learning Didactic Concept
This addresses the need for inclusive and effective ML education for students with varying backgrounds, though it is incremental as it builds on existing teaching methods.
The paper tackles the challenge of teaching machine learning across diverse disciplines by introducing the MachineLearnAthon format, a didactic concept that uses industrial datasets and real-world problems to cover the entire ML pipeline, promoting data literacy and practical skills.
Machine Learning (ML) techniques are encountered nowadays across disciplines, from social sciences, through natural sciences to engineering. The broad application of ML and the accelerated pace of its evolution lead to an increasing need for dedicated teaching concepts aimed at making the application of this technology more reliable and responsible. However, teaching ML is a daunting task. Aside from the methodological complexity of ML algorithms, both with respect to theory and implementation, the interdisciplinary and empirical nature of the field need to be taken into consideration. This paper introduces the MachineLearnAthon format, an innovative didactic concept designed to be inclusive for students of different disciplines with heterogeneous levels of mathematics, programming and domain expertise. At the heart of the concept lie ML challenges, which make use of industrial data sets to solve real-world problems. These cover the entire ML pipeline, promoting data literacy and practical skills, from data preparation, through deployment, to evaluation.