Abstract:

Data literacy is the ability to collect, manage, evaluate, and use data critically and is now becoming a key competency in the 21st century. It is important that university students learn or develop these skills during their studies to be able to effectively work with data, for example, as part of their final research projects Not only are students with technical backgrounds needed to master data, but also students from the universities of the Social Sciences and Humanities. These students find it challenging to complete courses focused on data analysis, found too difficult, abstract, or boring.

This paper is dedicated to a comprehensive analysis of the "Data Analysis" course of the Bachelor's degree program Mediamatics, which has been included in the field of Media and Communication Studies over the last five years, from the program's creation to the present. The analysis includes a description of the current status of the accredited course and the results of statistical analysis of three data sets: an anonymized data set on learning outcomes in the Data Analysis course, a data set on a survey of enrolled students, and a data set on feedback from the course. Feedback and learning results confirm that students perceive the course as very difficult and that students often have to retake the course.

In this paper, we identify the reasons for this state, which include the type of high school they attended, their preferences for the choice of a university, and their absence of a positive relationship with mathematics from their previous education. According to recent trends, we have proposed course innovations in terms of content, learning materials, and educational forms, including the application of the concept of learning by doing in the development of creative assessment, student participation in the production of multimedia content, and the use of the principles of gaming and digital storytelling.

Keywords:

Data literacy, course innovation, multimedia content, learning by doing, media and communication studies.