Personally, I have found this class to be very helpful in furthering my understanding of data and visualizing data. Before this class, I had the notion that data was just numbers that was used to show certain statistics, but I never thought about using data as a way of telling a story, or at least how to effectively tell a story with data.
Our class structure, the 0.5 credit seminar had its pros and cons. One of the things I liked about this structure was the time. The class itself wasn’t a huge time commitment, but at the same time, I was able to learn and get feedback from my own work and other student’s works. This was very helpful in terms of allowing me to think about my visualization and how I could make them better. Also, because it was only one hour a week, I was able to put more of my time into my internship which also allowed me to learn the insides and outs about research. On Wednesdays I would give an update on my work at research meetings at the Injury Prevention Center, which allowed me to further explain my project. However, because we didn’t have as much classroom time, I felt like we didn’t have enough time actually learning how to make visualizations. Although we used Google Charts and Google Fusion, I was expecting a variety of different programs or applications to make visualization, but it difficult in an hour long class.
The 3 week course, I feel like would be a little too hectic especially when paired with a community organization or internship. During the middle of the semester when the 3 week course would usually happen, I feel like a lot of students would be turned off by it since the middle of the semester is usually a busy time of the year.
I liked the third option the best since it allows for more variety of different ways to visualize data, but also allows for students to implement their learned skills with community organizations, although they won’t be spending as much time with them like an internship.
One suggestion that I think may work is having a semester long class that is partnered with one organization and using data from that organization for visualizations. During this class, coding and other methods of visualizations can be taught. Then during the next semester, students could take a follow-up class much like the one structure now and be paired with an organization for an internship. This way, students will already have experience with coding, but also have the opportunity to have an internship. Although this requires a lot of time, I feel like this would be a great way for students to obtain a skill and use that skill in the real world.