Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Steering Users to Existing Data Literacy Resources
Whether data services are well established and robust, siloed, or just beginning, a common challenge is awareness. Students and faculty on campus often do not know the full scope of available data resources and services, which limits their opportunities to develop essential data literacy skills. This presentation outlines the process that one university used to centralize marketing and access to existing resources for learning data skills.
An audit of current data needs at the university revealed that many students need training in cleaning, analyzing, communicating, and understanding data to be prepared to succeed in future research and employment endeavors. Library and campus support services meet some of these needs and could expand services to provide more training. Before venturing into new services, a full review of existing services and resources was conducted. There were many disparate services for research data support and building data literacy. Particularly, semester courses were an under-utilized path for increasing data literacy. These courses already include quality, hands-on data skill training, but awareness is lower because they are spread across different departments and colleges.
Courses that teach data skills were identified and visualized in customizable dashboards. This brought the information together and allowed students to direct their own path for gaining data skills, enabling autonomy in the learning process, which improves retention. The data course dashboards were added to a university-branded website along with self-paced, online learning resources for three main types of users—learners, researchers, and decision-makers. The website was designed to be a central place for users to find available data training and resources, simplifying information-seeking and marketing processes. Going forward, feedback from users and stakeholders will be used to identify unmet data needs that can be filled by additional collaboration between librarians and others on campus.