Abstract

This session will present and discuss a practical application of a learning by doing pedagogical approach developed to teach Communications and Media students about social media data analysis. The approach called “Data Challenges” present students with task-oriented activities that help them learn data analysis skills through their experiences in problem-solving. This presentation will provide an overview of the pedagogical principles that informed the design of the activity; practical examples of how it was used in class; and a summary of the students’ experience and feedback. Participants will be invited to discuss and share their own practices during the conversation.

Session and activities

This session will discuss how practices of learning by doing or experiential learning (Gibbs, 2013), based on the work of John Dewey (1997), were used to develop ‘Data Challenges”. These are problem-solving activities designed to help Communications and Media students develop (social media) data analysis skills. They include task-oriented activities that help students learn data analysis in practice. This experimental environment allowed students to find creative solutions for challenges that involved mathematical and computational concepts.

The Data Challenges are based on multiple pedagogical approaches. First, it uses the task-oriented element of learning by doing (Gibbs, 2013), allowing students to learn in an experimental setting. They are given a specific problem to solve and introduced to tools that can help them in the task – but no fixed solution is presented to them, allowing students to try and find potential solutions by themselves.

Second, Data Challenges are inspired by Freire’s (2000) pedagogical work and by the authentic assessment approach (McArthur, 2023). In combination, these pedagogical approaches inform the context-oriented element of Data Challenges, which reproduce problems and tasks that students might face either in their academic life or professional career. Additionally, they highlight how we can use data analysis to understand society and make a positive impact.

In this approach, students learn to value the task and the process of problem-solving, rather than focusing simply on task performance. This is evidenced in the feedback from students, for example: “I have enjoyed using the software and building on my Excel skills. I particularly found the structure of the classes very engaging as the practical element was academically challenging”.

In this session, I will introduce the principles followed in the conceptualisation of Data Challenges and some examples of activities developed in class. This will provide participants an overview of the pedagogical approaches mobilised by Data Challenges and its practical implications, which will help inform the discussion with attendees. The presentation will be followed by a motivated discussion with other participants about how the conceptual and pedagogical approaches of Data Challenges can be applied to other areas.

Questions to be discussed with participants include: What task-oriented and problem-solving activities can be used to practice skills specific to your areas? How can you apply learning by doing and authentic assessment to your teaching activities? What additional aspects and pedagogical principles should be taken into consideration when developing task-oriented activities in class?