Community of Online Research Assignments

Hidden Layer: Intellectual Privacy and Generative AI

The Hidden Layer Workshop introduces key generative AI (genAI) concepts through a privacy lens. Participants probe the possibilities and limitations of genAI while considering implications for intellectual privacy, intellectual property, data sovereignty, and human agency. In the centerpiece activity, participants engage in a hidden layer simulation to develop a conceptual understanding of the algorithms in the neural networks underlying LLMs and their implications for machine bias and AI hallucination.

Dark Patterns: Surveillance Capitalism and Business Ethics

This workshop engages participants in exploring corporate data collection, personal profiling, deceptive design, and data brokerage practices. Workshop content is contextualized with the theoretical frameworks of panoptic sort (Gandy), surveillance capitalism (Zuboff), and the four regulators (Lessig) and presented through a privacy and business ethics lens. Participants will learn how companies make money from data collection practices; explore how interface design can influence our choices and behaviors; and discuss business ethics regarding privacy and big data.

Understanding Data Visualization

Reading charts and infographics is part of everyday life, yet telling a story with data can be tricky. Luckily, data visualization is a skill that everyone can learn! Data visualization is the practice of translating information into a visual context, helping humans understand complex concepts and making it easier to identify patterns and uncover insights. In this workshop, learn the basics of designing data visualizations, selecting appropriate graph styles, and how to identify misleading data visuals.

Demonstrating the Distribution of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Using Patent Data and a Mapping Tool: GeoFRED® Marks the Spot

Students learn about innovation, the distribution of innovation across the country, and what can be patented. Working in groups, they examine patents and consider the changes the patents brought. They then use a mapping program and interpret data from that map to consider how local resources promote innovation.

Keeping It Real: Teach ACRL Information Literacy Frames with FRED data

A hybrid teaching module with two elements: an interactive online module for students to complete ahead of class and a face-to-face lesson plan that builds on the skills learned in the online lesson. The in-class session provides students with a critical exploration of the purchasing power of minimum wages across states and/or the earnings gap between men and women employed full time. The pre-class online course is titled: “FRED Interactive: Information Literacy” available through www.econlowdown.org.

Data Literacy

This session was part of an undergraduate, critical thinking and global perspectives course. The course is offered by various disciplines on campus. This instance focused on global challenges (The Seven Revolutions developed by csis.org). For the session the students applied two frameworks to data: authority is constructed and contextual and scholarship as conversation. Students learned about a data life cycle concept with emphasis on evaluation.

Teaching with Data: CET Assignment Repository from USC

The resources included represent 12 data-driven assignments created by USC faculty recipients of the Provost's Data-Driven Assignment Grant Program in Spring 2015. The faculty grant recipients worked with instructional designers in the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching to design these assignments in accordance with advancing USC's strategic focus on data literacy for students including abilities to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions, make evidence-based observations, and communicate findings.

Data Information Literacy

The working space for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded research project investigating data information literacy (DIL) needs of e-scientists. With the continued evolution of technology driven research or "e-science" impacting the skills necessary for effective data management and curation, a curriculum designed to effectively prepare the next generation of scientists for the dynamic nature of research becomes necessary.

ETD+ Toolkit

The ETD+ Toolkit is an approach to improving student and faculty research output management. Focusing on the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) as a mile-marker in a student’s research trajectory, it provides in-time advice to students and faculty about avoiding common digital loss scenarios for the ETD and all of its affiliated files. Free training resources on crucial data curation and digital longevity techniques are included across 6 modules.

Simply Map: Visualizing Census and Survey Data

This instructional session coincided with a project comparing data from two cities for an Urban Studies 1000 level (Freshmen) course. The session provided a basic overview of Simply Map as a web-based application, described the data available within and its origins (Census, American Community Survey, etc.), two activities for creating and visualizing the data, and supporting materials for understanding the data including a libguide and deliverable handout.

Everyday Data Management

This lesson introduces undergraduates to personal digital archiving (PDA) as an instructional bridge to research data management. PDA is the study of how people organize, maintain, use and share personal digital information in their daily lives. PDA skills closely parallel research data management skills, with the added benefit of being directly relevant to undergraduate students, most of whom manage complex personal digital content on a daily basis. By teaching PDA, librarians encourage authentic learning experiences that immediately resonate with students' day-to-day activities.

Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment

A white paper published by the Association of College & Research Libraries. Written by a working group of leaders from many parts of the association, this white paper explores and articulates three intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy. The paper also provides strategies for librarians from different backgrounds to initiate collaborations within their own campus environments between information literacy and scholarly communication.

Finding Data for Self, Community & Society- Part 1

Students will learn to identify where they might find school and community data; practice accessing this data; and create a school community data profile. Students will also be introduced to some of the problems of bias when looking at school and community data. For part one, student will find data for the high school they attended and the community they grew up in. In part two, students will collect the same data for a school in the community they will be working in over the course of the quarter.