The response from educators to data literacy keeps on growing. However, the topic might be challenging for those just starting or interested for the very first time in designing and teaching to promote data literacy. In fact, data literacy entails a number of technical, aesthetical and critical abilities, needed when you both read and produce text/stories using data. In this page you will find both practices as well as a number of research projects that aim at supporting pedagogical practices.
In this page, we are collecting information relating ongoing projects where you can find interesting examples of practice.
Do you want to have your say? You are welcome!
We attempt to collect progressive contributions and map ideas, practices and institutional strategies that foster data literacy in all lifelong learning spaces.
The Data Literacy Map is a visual representation based on a very simple form, open to anyone, which results can be seen on request.
The form is organized in two parts:
- One question on the geographical location (to map the contribution)
- Brief description of your experience
Then you’ll see your experience on the map, with a signpost!
Even though, the contributions are moderated, so we might follow with some questions in case is necessary to align your material to the others in the map.
Moreover, we are working on a Data Literacy Glossary!
You can access the form to contribute with a term/concept here:
- Contribution with a term/concept connected to data literacy
- Contribution with an experience of your own on data literacy
- Contribution with examples of data literacy activities/practice (from other colleagues/institutions)
- Contribution with resources supporting data literacy
This is the Open Glossary
There is a version of the questionnaire in Spanish: We are also mapping Educatioal Practices to support Data Literacy in Spanish
We are also working in a version in Italian (thanks to MED, the Italian Association in Media Education), and another in Catalan. We’d be delighted to receive practices in Italian and Catalan languages.
…And any other language (Croatian, Guaraní, Swahili, Hindi, Chinese…) if you provide an English version we can build over 🙂
Survey on Data Practices
Our BFairData study conducted in Higher Education to understand data practices connected to teaching and learning. The study is the beginning of an exploration aimed at promoting faculty development and professional learning around data practices in teaching and learning, including the evaluation of quality; data usage to inform teaching, learning and assessment; data as educational resource; data to empower learners and promote future critical (data) literacies.
UOC – EDUL@B
Key words: data practices, data cultures, critical data literacy, Higher Education, teaching, learning.
Data Therapy
A project to promote civic data literacy, empowering people in the society to learn about data materialities and structures.
MIT Media Lab
Key words: civic engagement, data literacy, data cultures, informal learning, lifelong learning.
Dear Data
The presentation of books that offers a method to deconstruct the materialities of data, namely, to explore and build creative data visualizations.
Dear Data Project by Giorgia Lupi & Stephanie Posavec
Key words: art, data visualization, informal learning, lifelong learning.
The UWinToolParade
A project from educators to educators, which aims at exploring commonly digital tools adopted in education. Amongst the many affordances, the videos explore data usages and the ToMs, Terms of Service nobody read and might affect data privacy and agency.
The Open Page, University of Windsor
Key words: educational technologies, terms of service, teachers’ education.
The Open Box
A project to media and data literacy at schools in the Italian context.
Data Ninja
Key words: school, teachers’ professional development, data literacy, media education.
Data Pop Alliance
A collaborative laboratory which brings together researchers, experts, practitioners, and activists to collaborate on three pillars of work: diagnosing local realities and human problems with data and AI; mobilizing capacities, communities, and ideas towards more data literate societies, and transforming the systems and processes that underpin our societies and countries.
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Connection Science, and Overseas Development Institute.
Key words: research, activism, capacity building, professional learning, lifelong learning, Big Data, AI, open data.
Data Feminism Lab
The Data + Feminism Lab uses data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial equity, particularly as they relate to space and place. The work is based on the intersectional approach outlined in Data Feminism (D’Ignazio & Klein, MIT Press, 2020).
Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT
Key words: gender equity, racial equity, intersectional approach, feminism, participatory design.
Smart Data Schools
An Australian project to enhance smart data usage at schools. The results include insights into the technical, informatic, organisational and social issues surrounding the (re)use of digital data in schools–then develop models of digital data ‘best practice’, leading to improved student outcomes, stronger teacher and parent engagement and better use of technical infrastructure investment.
Faculty of Education and Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University; Faculty of Education, Deakin University
Key words: students’ data, school, parent engagement, technical infrastructures.
Data Justice Lab
A Lab which activity is aimed at examining relationships between datafication and social justice. The interdisciplinary research works attempts to highlight the politics and impacts of data-driven processes and big data. The lab is hosted.
Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture.
Key words: research, activism, capacity building, professional learning, lifelong learning, Big Data, AI, social justice.
Data Society
A research theme as research coordinated action, which is concerned with innovative interdisciplinary studies of data-processing technologies and data-intensive socio-technical systems, with a particular focus on developing educational perspectives that can enhance the technical, sociological, political, and ethical understanding of the contemporary ‘data society’.
Digital Centre for Research in Digital Education – University of Edinburgh
Key words: research, data citizenship, civic education, lifelong learning.
SHEILA project
A closed project (2016-19), aiming at assisting European universities to become more mature users and custodians of digital data about their students as they learn online. It offers a set of tools, like a a policy development framework for HigherEd institutions.
EU Consortium led by the University of Edinburgh
Key words: students’ data, learning analytics, educational data literacy, higher education, institutional policies & strategies.
Responsible Use of Students Data in HE
An institutional project reflecting on responsible use of data in educational environments. The project discusses the commitments of students’ data usage: to honor the integrity, discretion, and humanity of students; also obliging instructors and organizations to improve practice in light of accumulating information and knowledge.
University of Stanford, Ithaka S+R
Key words: students’ data, higher education, institutional policies & strategies.
Youth Data Literacy
The “Exploring Data Worlds at the Public Library” project aims to increase awareness of the unique data literacy needs of youth as well as to develop strategies for training youth librarians so they can empower young people in our data-driven world.
Pratt Institute, Texas Austin University, London School of Economics and Political Science
Key words: youth, informal learning, libraries.
Digital Data & Society Consortium
A group of researchers who take a social, cultural, political and ethical perspective on digital data, both ‘small’ or personal data and large or ‘big data’ sets. The project brings together expertise across the social sciences, humanities and legal studies to engage in critical data studies.
Vitalities Lab, UNSW Sydney; Emerging Technologies Lab, Monash University; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney
Key words: research, society, lifelong learning, professional learning.
Big Data from the South
Embedded in the Datactive project which studies the forms of activism in the society relating data practices, The Big Data from the South Initiative is a space for theoretical and empirical exchange on the challenges of datafication and massive data collection as they unfold in the plurality of South(s) inhabiting our increasingly complex world.
University of Amsterdam
Key words: data activism, informal learning.
Data Ethics
A project exploring how to be more trustworthy when using data. The project support reflection to demystify questions around data ethics. It also introduces some practical tools and learning resources to help individuals and organisations make more ethical decisions.
The Open Data Institute
Key words: Open Data, data ethics, professional learning, lifelong learning.
A Scuola di Open Coesione
A Scuola di OpenCoesione (ASOC) is an innovative educational path aimed at promoting and developing principles of active and conscious citizenship in Italian schools, through research and civic monitoring of European and national public funding.
Italian Ministry of Education and Italian representation at the European Commission.
Key words: school, open data, civic education, statistical literacy, data journalism, civic monitoring.
Barcelona Repte Dades Obertes
The Barcelona Open Data Challenge was born as a competition for schools. It is aimed primarily at 3rd. 4th year of ESO (higher secondary school) students, who are engaged in training cycles, supervised by teachers and hence taken to analyse data to promote creative projects.
City of Barcelona, Open Data Unit
Key words: data activism, school education, open data.
Fair Data Cultures in Higher Education 