Data Collection from the Internet: An Introduction to Web Scraping (3 credits)

The Internet offers a trove of data for both academic research and industry applications. This course introduces the student to the basics of collecting data from Internet web pages. After an introduction to the differences between approaches to web scraping, the student will learn to apply basic web scraping methods for collecting data. Limitations to what types of data are obtainable through these methods are also discussed. Data from web scraping can be transformed into a spreadsheet, which can be analyzed through any number of techniques (note: data analysis is not covered in the course). To pass the course, the student will need to demonstrate the ability to create a spreadsheet from web scraped data.