One year of DALIDA Data Literacy Workshops for Adults: A Report

Abstract

Data literacy is the ability to identify, collect, process, and interpret data to gain and communicate insights. It relies on many disciplines ranging from maths and statistics to language and arts. Its importance is recognized for industry and business, but learning opportunities outside of tertiary education are lacking. In an increasingly data-driven society, the importance of data literacy is not limited to a professional context. Data literacy involves critical thinking and is crucial to becoming responsible, involved, informed, and contributing members of society. Unfortunately, we believe that socially, economically, or educationally disadvantaged groups do not have access to resources that help them gain (at least) an awareness of the topic. DALIDA is a public engagement project that aims to design workshops about this topic for that particular audience. Recognizing that data literacy is a very complex subject matter, we avail of co-creation activities to ensure that the workshops are attractive and engaging. This paper presents DALIDA, which commenced in 2021, and report on our approach and current progress.