Empowering Data Vision: a Self-Paced Introduction to the Convergence of AI and Data Science

The below materials were adapted from the third annual Smith-Kettlewell Summer Research Institute held in summer of 2025 and may be outdated. While core concepts may still apply, some details, particularly in the Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot modules may no longer reflect current interfaces or available features. This content is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind.

What we present here is a strong foundation, not a comprehensive body of knowledge. We highly encourage you to explore outside resources and, most importantly, to learn by doing.

Module 1: Language-agnostic Data Science

• What is Data Science
• What is Tidy Data
• Data Types

Module 2: Language-agnostic Data Visualization

• Bar Plot
• Histogram
• Line Plot
• Box Plot
• Heat Map
• Scatter Plot

Module 3: Visual Studio Code

• Overview of VS Code
• Speech and Sound Feedback
• Adding Language Support and Installing Extensions
• Reading Code
• Editing Code
• Running Code using the Terminal

Module 4: AI assisted Programming

• Copilot Intro and Setup
• Suggestions
• Chat
• Agent Mode

Contributors

• Aziz N. Zeidieh, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Venkatesh Potluri, PhD, University of Michigan
• Sile O’Modhrain, PhD, University of Michigan
• JooYoung Seo, PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• James Coughlan, PhD, The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute (Principal Investigator)

Funding

This content was made possible by funding from the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Blindness and Low Vision at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute (grant number 90REGE0018), funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).

License

Except where otherwise noted, all content here is made available under the licenses described below.

Modules and the lessons within are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

code examples and the Visual Studio Code accessibility audio signals included with these materials are licensed separately under the MIT License.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2025-2026, The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
Copyright (c) 2015 - present, Microsoft Corporation

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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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