2023 North Carolina Datathon

MONDAY, MARCH 6, 2023, 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2023, 8:30 AM - 5:15 PM

INNOVATE

SOLVE

COLLABORATE

ABOUT THE NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION DATATHON

The goal of the NC Datathon is to leverage technology and data to develop innovative solutions for addressing complex problems. This event will bring together university and student-led teams from across North Carolina. Teams are challenged to solve an education-related problem by using multiple sources of data.

Teams will work to develop applications, dashboards, and/or solutions to the problem and then present their projects to a panel of expert judges and conference attendees who vote for the best team. The two-day event will include keynote speakers, team work time, presentations, judging, and awarding of winners.

THE CHALLENGE

While students across North Carolina experienced declines in academic achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic, gaps widened between Black, Hispanic, and American Indian students and white and Asian students and between students from low-income and more affluent communities. While we know that student access to cultural enrichment experiences can have a positive impact on academic achievement, students of color, low-income students, and students with disabilities are less likely to have access to these educational resources than their peers. As North Carolina aims to support learning recovery and ensure that students are supported to current and future success, it is crucial to determine where students lack access to vital opportunities for learning outside of the classroom. Teams will use the provided data to create a state-wide cultural enrichment index that maps the location and accessibility of out-of-school resources. This could take the form of an application, dashboard, and/or other data visualization; teams could also map the accessibility of these out-of-school supports with learning loss rates from the Office of Learning Recovery.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

What are the services and resources that students need outside of the classroom to be successful in learning?

What is currently known about if and how students across the state access one or more of these supports?

Where are there opportunities to expand access intentionally and strategically to out of school support services and resources? What would that expansion look like?

What is the best equation or data analysis process teams can create and measure the value of out-of-school supports?

THE DATA

Teams are encouraged to use the publicly available data sets to develop their solutions. Teams are welcome to identify and utilize additional data sources so long as send them to the Hunt Institute to share with other teams. Please contact Julia Whitfield, Associate Policy Analyst at The Hunt Institute, at jwhitfield@hunt-institute.org to share additional datasets by February 24^th, 2023, at 5:00pm ET.