Creative Data Literacy

Data is becoming more central to civic decision making every day. However, data literacy is most often introduced with technical tools and jargon, excluding many of those that are already marginalized in these settings. Building on an inclusive pedagogy, we’ve created a multi-lingual set of tools and activities that build data literacy, available online for free. We work with non-profits, local governments, newsrooms, libraries, and others.

Learn More

• Explore activities: Data Culture Project
• Try out tools: DataBasic.io

Collaborators

• Caterine D’Ignazio - Data + Feminism Lab @ MIT

Recent Related Blog Posts

• How and Why We Sketch While Visualizing Data
• Sketching Together Online
• Librarians as “Civic Data Ambassadors” - revisiting a project
• Paper: Pandemic Pedagogy @ IEEE Vis 2020

Papers, Presentations, and Press

• Bhargava, R. (2023). Data Representation as Epistemological Resistance. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Conference.
• Bhargava, R. (2023). Teaching Data That Matters: History and Practice. In J. E. Raffaghelli & A. Sangrà (Eds.), Data Cultures in Higher Education: Emergent Practices and the Challenge Ahead (pp. 267–292). Springer International Publishing.
• Bhargava, R., Williams, D., & D’Ignazio, C. (2021). Sketching to Learn: An Analysis of Work by Novice Data Visualization Learners. Proceedings of IEEE Vis 2021 (Short Paper).
• Lee, V. R., Pimentel, D. R., Bhargava, R., & D’Ignazio, C. (2022). Taking data feminism to school: A synthesis and review of pre‐collegiate data science education projects. British Journal of Educational Technology, bjet.13251.
• Bhargava, R. & D’Ignazio, C. (2021). Teaching Data Journalism in a World of Tool and Tech Overload. Proceedings of the 13th ACM Web Science Conference 2021 (WebSci ’21 Companion). Southampton, United Kingdom.
• Bhargava, R. (2020). Pandemic Pedagogy: Taking Data-Viz Learning Online. Visualization Activities Workshop. Presented at the IEEE Vis Conference, Utah, USA.
• D’Ignazio, C., & Bhargava, R. (2020). Data Visualization Literacy: A Feminist Starting Point. In M. Engebretsen & H. Kennedy (Eds.), Data Visualization in Society. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.
• Bhargava, R. (2019). Data Literacy. In R. Hobbs & P. Mihailidis (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy Education. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
• D’Ignazio, C., & Bhargava, R. (2018). Cultivating a Data Mindset in the Arts and Humanities. Public, 4(2).
• D’Ignazio, C., & Bhargava, R. (2018). Creative Data Literacy: A Constructionist Approach to Teaching Information Visualization. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 12(4).
• D’Ignazio, C., & Bhargava, R. (2016). DataBasic: Design Principles, Tools and Activities for Data Literacy Learners. The Journal of Community Informatics, 12(3).
• Bhargava, R., Kadouaki, R., Bhargava, E., Castro, G., & D’Ignazio, C. (2016). Data Murals: Using the Arts to Build Data Literacy. The Journal of Community Informatics, 12(3).
• Bhargava, R., & D’Ignazio, C. (2017). Data Sculptures as a Playful and Low-Tech Introduction to Working with Data. Presented at the Designing Interactive Systems, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
• Bhargava, R., & D’Ignazio, C. (2015). Designing Tools and Activities for Data Literacy Learners. Data Literacy Workshop. Presented at the ACM Conference on Web Science, Oxford, UK.
• Letouzé, E., Noonan, A., Bhargava, R., Deahl, E., Sangokoya, D., & Shoup, N. (2015). Beyond Data Literacy: Reinventing Community Engagement and Empowerment in the Age of Data. Data-Pop Alliance.
• D’Ignazio, C., & Bhargava, R. (2015). Approaches to Building Big Data Literacy. Presented at the Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange, New York, NY, USA.