Description

This course provides students with the tools and understanding needed to collect, process, and analyze data, turn it into useful information, and communicate knowledge to a variety of audiences via written and visual means. Students will earn how they can take unprocessed, messy, and complex data from a variety of sources, turn this into something useful (and reliable), and then effectively communicate the underlying 'so what' to other people to help influence policy and practice.As part of this process, students will learn the skills needed to spot incomplete, suspect, and/or fake data, and to identify misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. Students will learn these skills through a combination of different modalities. At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to produce their own impactful policy briefs and data visualizations to effectively communicate impactful information to a variety of audiences.