Course Information
| Session |
|---|
| Credits | 1.5 CEUs or 15 PDHs |
|---|---|
| Registration dates | We accept registrations through the first week of classes, unless enrollment is full, and unless the class was canceled before it started due to low enrollment. |
Introduction to Data Visualization
$200.00
Dates: June 5 - July 2Credits: 1.5 CEUs or 15 PDHs
As information specialists, we deal with data on a regular basis. Data Visualization helps us explore our data and communicate it effectively with our audience. In this four-week course, we will cover fundamental principles of data visualization. We will learn how to turn data into information which can be used to drive better decision making through effective and appealing visuals.
Course Description
As information specialists, we deal with data on a regular basis. Data Visualization helps us explore our data and communicate it effectively with our audience. In this four-week course, we will cover fundamental principles of data visualization. We will learn how to turn data into information which can be used to drive better decision making through effective and appealing visuals.
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Choose the best visualization format for their data
- Think like designers
- Create appealing graphs
- Tell a story with data.
Dalal Rahme
Dalal Rahme has over 11 years of experience in academic libraries. She received her M.S in Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2014 with a specialization in the Data Curation and Socio-Technical Data Analytics.
She currently holds the position of data services librarian at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where she assists in the curation of data for different projects, delivers training and workshops related to data literacy, data management, data curation and data visualization, and helps in administering the institutional repository at AUB. She is also an instructor at the Graduate School of Information Science at the Lebanese Public University where she teaches digital preservation and data curation since 2015. She served on several committees at IFLA (FAIFE 2018-2019), ALA (Students Chapter 2013-2014) and the Lebanese Library Association (board member 2017-2019).
How to Register
To enroll yourself or other participants in a class, use the “Register” button that follows the description of each course. If the “Register” button does not show up, try loading the page in a different web browser. Contact us if you have technical difficulties using our shopping cart system or would like to pay for an enrollment using another method. On the payment page in the shopping cart system, there is a place to add notes, such as the names and email addresses of participants you wish to enroll. We will contact you to request this information in response to your processed payment if you do not include it in the “notes” field. Prior to the start of the workshop, we will send participants their login instructions.Payment Info
Our shopping cart system allows you to pay with a credit card or with PayPal.Alternatively, if it is an institutional payment, we can arrange to invoice you. Contact us by email, and we can make arrangements to suit your institution's business processes.
KL –
The course description was changed between the time I signed up and the beginning of the course, and thus much of the course content changed from practical to theoretical and worst of all, self-directed. In a four-week course, the first week was spent primarily on introductions. While some of the lectures/presentations in the following weeks did present useful concepts, there was no instruction on how to use any data visualization tools, and all of the assignments told you to just create a visualization — any visualization — based on what we had learned that week. A true beginner coming into this course with no idea of how to use any visualization software would be left floundering. Though this course is marked as an Introduction, I wouldn’t recommend taking it if you have zero experience with any data visualization software.
RoryLitwin –
The instructor had this response:
– It is true that I have changed the course description maybe a week or two before the course started, I wanted to make sure I am explaining to students that this is a tool agnostic course. Therefore, the student still had time to drop out of the course.
– The first week was definitely not “primarily spent on introductions”, we had materials, readings and 2 exercises.
– “there was no instruction on how to use any data visualization tools”: in week 3 I have provided a step by step tutorial on how to use Tableau along with an exercise.
– The course was not purely theoretical as students were asked to apply the theories they are learning through the exercises and the assignments.
Egge, Vaughn –
This was an excellent course. I’ve long been interested in creating clear, impactful visualizations but this course provided useful principles and metrics to do so consistently and improve at doing so over time.
Kathleen Shepler –
I feel that the Data Visualization course was just what I wanted and needed. In a 4 week course it was unrealistic to think that I would learn how to use new tools. I appreciated the theory that applied to the use of any tool. I learned how important it is to use the tool to explore the data before choosing how best to present the data. It seems a simple idea that I realized I was barely doing. I do agree that if I’d had no experience at all it would not have been easy to complete the assignments. Thankfully I had some experience using Excel. All in all I’m glad I took the course.
dd –
This was a solid conceptual introduction to the world of data visualization. The instructor obviously assembled the supporting materials and readings with care, and they added a great deal to my understanding of the subject matter. The weekly course content was beneficial and helped to shape my thinking on data visualization. As an added benefit, the introductory nature of the class had a secondary benefit in helping me to think through how data visualization can serve the data literacy efforts at my institution. I’ve already returned to the lectures on a number of occasions as I begin to think about how to integrate data literacy concepts into my information literacy teaching.
The instructor was available for help, and I’ve already signed up for another class with this instructor.
Nicola Struthers –
I entered this course with some basic ideas on how to present data using Excel and found this course really helpful in developing those ideas.
It has clarified the best ways to approach presenting data, understanding the context of the information, what the most appropriate display is, how to de-clutter, focus the audience attention and tell a story. There are useful readings and exercises each week. The colleagues I was working with on the course were very interactive, sharing experiences and thoughts, which really helped. Everything really came together in Week 4 and I have continued to apply what I have learnt to my current work.