About This Course
Why We Made This Course
This short course began its life as a Library workshop developed by Nora Mulvaney, which aimed to teach strategies to critically assess data sources and visualizations and slow the spread of misinformation. The driving force behind developing the workshop was the glut of confusing data visualizations that emerged throughout 2020 as the world tried to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the pandemic made line graphs and dashboards ubiquitous, we believe that critically interpreting data has now become an essential skill for everyday life. The ability to critically interpret data visualization will be crucial–across disciplines–for jobs of the future and the rapidly evolving labour market.
We are hopeful that the value of this short course will outlive the pandemic that inspired it.
Purpose of This Course
This short course is on the topic of data literacy that will enable you to become a more discerning and critical user of data, graphs, charts and infographics. The purpose is to deepen your critical engagement with data visualizations and develop your data literacy skills.
In Module 1, we provide a quick introduction to key concepts and theory related to data literacy and data visualizations. In Module 2, we investigate how to critically assess data sources and visualizations. In Module 3, you will learn how to find and evaluate credible sources of data. Finally, in Module 4, we cover considerations for creating your own data visualizations and infographics.
Throughout the course, we provide examples and activities designed to test your ability to critically analyze and evaluate key elements of data visualizations and identify design choices that lead to misinformation.
What You Need
We suggest the following for this short course:
- An estimated 30 minutes per module. Depending on how many of the external links you explore, it may take you more time.
- Access to a computer and the Internet.
How to Navigate the Modules
We have designed this short course to be done at your own pace. You can navigate to the parts you find most interesting or relevant to your current information needs.
This version of the course is hosted in Pressbooks (a WordPress-based online platform). Pressbooks is used to host open courses and textbooks. Please see the video below on how to navigate Pressbooks.
Iowa State University Digital Press. Navigating Your Course Pressbook. Licenced under Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0.
Learning Outcomes
These are the learning outcomes for the overall course. Each module will include a list of objectives specific to that module to guide you through your learning.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this short course, you should be able to:
- Discuss the different stages of the data journey
- Explain why data visualizations are effective
- Differentiate between different types of data visualizations
- Analyze and break down a data visualization
- Identify misleading features in a data visualization
- Evaluate a data visualization using data literacy strategies
- Assess the credibility of a data visualization’s underlying data
- Explain how to “fact check” a data source
- Explain some of the key considerations for telling responsible stories with data
- Outline some effective ways to communicate data
Not Covered in This Course
This course concentrates on critically interpreting data visualizations and the theory behind responsible design choices. We do not cover how to create data visualizations from scratch. We also do not cover other stages of the data journey, such as collecting or cleaning data.
