SLA2016 : Teaching Data Literacy

There was a lot of content in this session and much of it went by too fast.  I hope the presenters place their presentations online.

Elaine Lasda

Elaine Lasda - Teaching data literacy to undergraduates (Her presentation is online here.)

University of Albany has a strong literacy component to its curriculum.  It fits into the curriculum in different ways,including information literacy for math and statistics, e.g., UNL 299.  

Data Literacy Concepts:

• Quality
• Context 
• Authority
• How is it created, documented, etc.  

Lasda began her lesson for the class with a hands-on assignment. She used data from New York State and noted that NYS has very good data available. She then does a lecture.  Over time she has shortened the lecture, because the lecture has not gone over well.  In the future, rather than a lecture she is going to use discussion question.  She had ended her guest lecture with a survey/assessment.

Lasda is looking to expanding this class/concept to other disciplines.

Http://tinyurl.com/UndergradDataLit

Michael Fosmire - Teaching Data Literacy at the Graduate Level

DIL: the problem

Students should know this by now

Students don't know what they should know

Students weren't introduced to this as undergrads

DIL competencies:

• Database and data formats
• Understand principles of relational databases
• Understand standard formats of discipline
• Under appropriate formats for research questions
• Discovery and acquisition of data
• Locate and utilize disciplinary data repositories
• Evaluate quality of data located
• Recognize practices
• Recognize  standards
• Data conversion and interoperability
• Can migrate data
• Understand benefits of standard formats
• Understand risk of loss and corruption
• Curation and reuse
• Data Management and organization 
• Data preservation
• Data process and analysis
• Data quality and documentation
• Data visualization 
• Ethics and attribution
• Metadata and data description

What is unique abut grad students?  They are highly motivated. Need guidance. Do not want busy work.

In terms of instruction the options are:

• Workshops - target, at the point of need,hands-on 
• Create a "Data Day" - might do during a semester break because graduate students frequently stay in town then.
• Get a GRIP on your research promotion and programs
• More depth, more engagement 
• Includes a portal
• Http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/grip
• Credit bearing courses
• Data methods , etc.
• Geoinformatics course - from locate to deposit
• Data Methods course
• Research lab consultations
• Interview
• Plan - introduce the concepts in relation to the research lab itself.  Scaffold the topics.
• Deploy
• Created specific activities for the students.

Stefanie Maclin-Hurd, EBSCO

Talked about training staff on data and specifically on the use of ILS data.

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Updated: 06/17/2016& 6/26/2016