Becoming "data conversant" is only growing in importance as data-related practice becomes increasingly ingrained in public and academic discourse. Learning data-related skills, like reading, working with, analyzing, and arguing with data, is often viewed as a purely technical process that centers mastery of coding or data analysis software.

Instead, this course will take a justice-centered approach that examines how systems of power affect and are affected by data. Students will gain practical experience through low-tech explorations of real-world data, but we won't shy away from or gloss over data's inherent complexities. And data are complex, just like the people who are responsible for their creation, curation, and use.

To help us navigate these murky waters, and to move past number crunching to deeper critical analysis, we'll be drawing on the expertise of scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts from an array of disciplines and backgrounds.

There are no prerequisites for this course.

Course Syllabus.md is a full syllabus for this course

The instructor/ folder contains materials for use by the instructor in planning and running this course

• README.md, a more detailed breakdown of the folder's contents
• A reading list (Instructor-Reading-List.md) which is meant to provide a foundation for instructor in their teaching of this course
• A day-to-day lesson plan (Lesson-Plan.md)
• A slides/ folder, which contains lecture slides (linked from Lesson-Plan.md)

The student/ folder contains student-facing materials

• README.md, a more detailed breakdown of the folder's contents
• A Course-Reading-List.md, listing all required readings
• Class-specific folders (e.g., Class-05/) containing data files used in that class

Unless otherwise noted, all materials created by me (Clayton Hayes) as the developer of this course are released under a CC BY Creative Commons license.

When available, I have attempted to note licenses for any materials created by others that I'm using. I am claiming fair use for some images, especially those in the slides, so please look through the files and decide your level of comfort.