The rise of data-driven communication has placed increasing emphasis on data literacy—namely, the ability to produce and analyze a wide range of data visualizations, from illustrations and technical diagrams to complex graphs and tables. Many academic disciplines and professions rely on data as the basis for acquiring, building, and disseminating knowledge in their fields. Institutions and corporations, in turn, now collect data about individuals for everything from supporting students’ learning to developing ever more targeted marketing campaigns. Others use open-access data for advocacy work, using data-based graphics to advance social and political causes. This course is designed to help you think critically and ethically about data and gain practical data literacy skills. Students learn how to use online data visualization tools to make data more understandable and develop rhetorical skills to make data more meaningful, by identifying and presenting the story they tell.
*Academic credit is defined by the University of Pennsylvania as a course unit (c.u.). A course unit (c.u.) is a general measure of academic work over a period of time, typically a term (semester or summer). A c.u. (or a fraction of a c.u.) represents different types of academic work across different types of academic programs and is the basic unit of progress toward a degree. One c.u. is usually converted to a four-semester-hour course.
Instructor
- Lecturer in Critical Writing, Marks Family Center for Excellence in Writing
Dr. Dana Walker holds a doctorate in information science from the University of Michigan and has been teaching writing in the University of Pennsylvania’s Critical Writing Program since 2011. Since arriving at Penn, Dana has taught about 50 writing seminars, including PROW 100, and has… Read more
