Community Engagement and Data Praxis

Responding to increasing demand for applied trainng and experience along with a developing movement to use data and data science for the public interest, we are piloting a 1-credit Public Interest Data Lab course in Spring 2018 in partnership with UVA’s Data Science Institute. The lab course will provide experience working collaboratively, openly, and reproducibly on data science challenges brought to us by local clients. This is an exercise in learning by doing designed to provide students with an opportunity to enhance their data skills, to gain experience working as a team on a joint project, and to promote the social good.

The lab will focus on using open-source tools (GitHub, R) and resources (books and tutorials) and conducting our work as openly as possible, sharing workflows and evaluating the challenges and constraints publicly.

For the first project, we’ll be working with the City of Charlottesville’s Department of Social Services (DSS) as a collaborative client.