Introduction

The first two weeks of the course provide time to introduce our topic of study, familiarise yourself with the course site and your personal blog space, as well as prepare for the ongoing assessed activity that will run throughout the subsequent nine weeks.

In the first week, we’ll tackle a key overarching question for this course – what are ‘data’? – and try to work through various perspectives and ideas that will help us to develop a critical understanding of the topic, and a firm grounding for the ensuing course activities. A group tutorial in week 1 will provide the opportunity to meet your tutors and peers, as well as discuss the conceptual and practical aspects of the course.

In the second week, we’ll focus on preparation for the ongoing assessed task: the data visualisation blog. We’ll look at some examples of hand drawn data visualisations, discuss the scope of the assignment and its eventual assessment, as well as practical tips and strategies for the ongoing task.