This Community of Practice (CoP) aims to teach and aid the acquisition of data literacy. The term describes the ability to collect, manage, evaluate, interpret, and apply data; all of this combined with a constant critical reflection of the prerequisites and goals. Students as well as lecturers work together on an interdisciplinary and collaborative basis in order to design new course formats. The topic of data literacy offers numerous starting points for realistic research questions and project-oriented forms of work. Consequently, it is a good starting point for the development of innovative teaching formats that can be used across disciplines.
Data literacy is the ability to collect, manage, evaluate and apply data in a critical way. In order to promote awareness of the cross-disciplinary necessity of these skills, the CoP is developing digital self-learning units. These units are implemented in participating degree programmes and can be published beyond Bielefeld University. Consequently, data literacy is to be implemented within the academic work of even degree programmes that have generally not really dealt with data literacy so far. A distinction is made between general and domain-specific types of data literacy, which are both closely modulated.
In addition to the production of digital self-learning units, specific application scenarios for teaching data literacy are tested. Based on the data life cycle, conceptualisations of general and domain-specific data literacy are developed. The concrete application takes place within the context of courses and are reflected upon in an iterative process and further developed as potential research-oriented teaching resources. For this purpose current university curricula are being revised in order to establish data literacy in the degree programmes.
Furthermore, formats such as hackathons and lectures offer a continuous interdisciplinary exchange which also decidedly includes the (local urban) public.