Dimitra Petropoulou shares her thoughts on a range of digital skills, from coding to video making, with undergraduate and DSL columnist Kara Jessup
Could you tell me a little bit about yourself and what exactly you do at the LSE?
My name is Dimitra, I'm the Deputy Head of Department for Education in the Department of Economics, and I'm also the Programme Director for our undergraduate programmes. My role is mainly to look after the education side of the Economics Department and make sure our programmes are up to date, students are happy, and to bring about improvements in terms of our educational offering and student support. That includes elements that relate to specific digital skills and how we embed them into our programmes, to better prepare students for their academic work, as well as for their professional futures.
Could you tell me a little bit about your past collaborations with the Digital Skills Lab?
In Economics we collaborate with the DSL very closely in a range of initiatives, largely designed to expose students to Python and provide opportunities for them to develop coding skills, through applications to economics. Employers and researchers are placing greater importance on coding skills, and that’s been happening at the same time as we’ve been redesigning our economics undergraduate curriculum. This has given us the opportunity to integrate coding into our economics courses. The DSL has been there to advise us on how to set up dedicated Python training for our students, on thinking about how we can put it into the best format (i.e. bespoke Moodle pages for Python, alongside similar Stata for Economics Moodle pages) and on what we should emphasize so that our students can become economists in the digital age. The DSL has also been there to provide support to our students and to help train our Python student coaches.
We also collaborate on our Python for Economics week that runs for Economics students during LT reading week. This is an extra-curricular opportunity that allows students to apply their Python skills to an economics project, in a group setting.
How do you use digital skills in your role and how do they help you?
Digital skills are crucial and more so during the pandemic years when everything has shifted online. When I think of digital skills and economics, I’m thinking primarily of coding, I'm thinking of machine learning and thus the more ‘high tech’ side of digital skills, though use of Excel and PowerPoint remain very important in my every day working life. Another important aspect is making videos and designing presentations…because we’re seeing more and more people engaging with video as a medium. Three or four years ago, if I wanted to say something to students, I would almost certainly write an email. Now, I’m much more likely to film a video message.
It’s very important to be able to communicate effectively digitally: there’s always some sort of digital interface to what we do, whether it’s sending an email or visualizing data, it’s very rare that we just meet and speak with someone with no digital aid of some kind.
What skills (hard or soft) would you recommend focusing on for students looking to get a quantitative PhD?
For quantitative PhDs, like economics for example, I think it will depend on the focus of one’s research, but increasingly flexible languages such as R or Python are being used. You need these hard skills to be able to do the research and generate results, but a further important aspect of a PhD is to develop the softer skill of effectively communicating ideas and research findings.
By definition, a PhD will involve research on the cutting edge, on the frontier of knowledge, so you have to be able to communicate those new ideas effectively in order to have an impact. How do your findings affect the world and shape policy? Someone has to be listening when you are arguing for your research, so you have to think about the most effective way of getting your point across, whether it’s a PowerPoint presentation or a video. How do you synthesize your ideas for different audience? How do you visualize things in a way that's accessible? There's also more emphasis these days on communicating economics ideas to diverse audiences. How will you explain this to a fellow researcher versus a policymaker versus a student? Different audiences might need different digital media.
It’s also important to remember that digital skills are not static. There was a time when PowerPoint was new, and now lecturers and PhD students of quantitative disciplines are more likely to use LaTeX. No academic beyond a certain age will have learned Python or R as part of their own education. An important piece of advice is therefore to remember that there is no one static body of digital knowledge that you need to master, and what is being used now is not necessarily what will be used in 5 years. So, you should expect to continue developing digital skills alongside your studies, research or professional practice.
If you had one piece of advice to offer students while they’re still here at LSE what would it be?
One piece of advice is the importance of trial and error in developing coding skills. For coding for instance using Python, it often will help you to focus on an end goal. If you’re learning to code for a specific objective, you are likely to be more productive. In this context you can also learn more easily by scratching your head and thinking “How can I get around this problem to get to this outcome?”.
Coding skills are also often put to different uses and to solve new problems, which requires you to think outside the box in order to apply them differently every time. Don’t hesitate to make mistakes because that is how you will learn. Students often seek a crash course in Python or R, but what is more effective is taking on a project and giving yourself the space to stumble, look for help and find solutions to concrete problems.