First off, I think that a data visualization seminar is an incredibly important and relevant course, and it is worth continuing, especially when considering the shift of print journalism to online media. Since there is so much value in data visualization, I think it would be more effective to expand the seminar rather than shrink it into a 3-week module in an existing course. As a fan of the visualizations produced by The Economist and the New York Times, I began the seminar too ambitiously, and thought I would be able to produce similar visualizations. My lack of coding knowledge was definitely a source of frustration. Thus, from my personal experience, I think that option 3, expanding the course with more content and coding, is the best method of redesigning the seminar. This would enable the students to already have a set of tools to create visualizations before working with a community partner. I felt in the first few weeks of the seminar that I couldn’t really begin a fruitful relationship with my community partner because I had very limited data viz skills at the time.
Though, community partners should definitely remain a component of the course, because it offers a real world opportunity to put the skills you have learned to work. At the same time, more emphasis on coding might seem daunting to non-techie people. However, it is probably better to struggle through class with others than struggle alone. Therefore, it might also be beneficial to pair up students and have them work together with a community partner. Finally, I think that the talk from Alvin Chang was helpful in that it enabled me to take a step back from the more technical aspects of data viz, and remember what is the objective or the issue is that I am trying to address through my visualization, and how can I tell an effective story with it.