Teaching Data on the Web
September 30th, 2007 | Published in Journalism | 10 Comments
Matt’s advice (the latest in the series kicked off by Paul Bradshaw) is excellent: “Learn how to put data on the web.” But check out the next paragraph, where he suggests some venues for accomplishing the actual learning. Notice anything missing? You know, like the journalism school?
Let me begin by saying that I’ve been an adjunct instructor at several schools during the past seven years and enjoy it very much. So I do have a small financial interest in this question of how data skills get taught to would-be journalists. But if large private schools like George Washington University, where I currently teach a class, don’t have someone on the faculty who can teach this stuff, what are the chances that most journalism students who are even interesting in taking Matt’s advice will have the opportunity to do so within a journalism structure? The comic strip Bloom County once had a strip devoted to school teacher pay that ended with the fraction diddly/squat. That’s about right in this situation, too.
Of course, Matt’s advice can still be acted upon, and probably would have some beneficial side effects for the student (meeting students from other academic disciplines being chief among them). But until and unless journalism schools show that data has any sort of importance to them, most journalism students only will be exposed to the possibilities, but not the actual process, of working with data on the Web.
This is an eminently fixable problem, especially when you consider that less than 10 years ago, the number of new media faculty was pitifully small. Now we’ve got experienced, talented folks who teach not just the basics of online but the best ways to use digital media in a news context. Which makes it all the more odd that CAR, which has been around for several decades now, has had so few advocates in the academy.
Let’s face it; despite my parental background (both English majors and teachers), I’m not going to challenge anyone in a writing contest. And I’m design-impaired to the point where I still think it’s cool to draw two-dimensional boxes during boring meetings. So while my journalism classes were usually interesting from an intellectual and academic point of view, they did little to actually prepare me for doing the kind of journalism I like to do. I can’t be the only person to experience this. Put another way: it can’t be good for journalism education if the best data-oriented journalists owe little or nothing to their journalism classes.
When I went looking for an intern to do mostly technical tasks for us at washingtonpost.com, I didn’t even bother with the local journalism departments. I found a computer science major instead. And that works – until the point where compsci majors realize what news organizations pay, or when they discover that either they aren’t that interested in journalism, or journalism isn’t much interested in them.
October 1st, 2007 at 2:16 am (#)
[...] You can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 9:37 am (#)
As I suggested in a comment on Matt’s post, it would be great if journalism teachers could give the students a taste (or two) of what this all means. Then those with an aptitude (or an affinity) for data wrangling could be inspired to go outside the j-school and hone those skills.
I’m talking about an assignment (or two) that we could give to any journalism student — even one with no experience in programming. I challenge you and Matt (and others) to come up with two assignments and put them on NewsU — for free access by everyone.
I used to require this assignment in my advanced online course (old technologies because it was a few years ago):
Students were given an Access database containing calendar information (who, where, when). They were required to build a four-page interface using Dreamweaver and ASPs (yeah, today I would use PHP and either MySQL or an XML file).
They worked in teams of three. Usually one kid did all the work. They had about two weeks to complete this assignment, and I never felt it was very successful. Resistance was very high, and the calendar data didn’t give them a good sense of how we use data in reporting and sharing new information.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:12 pm (#)
I responded to Mindy on my site here. I think there are some “getting your feet wet” tools and opportunities out there. Gateway drugs if you will.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:52 pm (#)
I also responded on Matt’s site.
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:27 am (#)
Very good points – but despite our journalism students having the option to study web elements, not enough pursue it to the final year. I have one or two now starting to look at CMS and other elements; the rest still focus on print and broadcast.
PS: I’ve now put that list on a wiki for anyone to edit:
http://howtobeajournalismstudent.pbwiki.com/
October 4th, 2007 at 1:13 am (#)
[...] Teaching Data on the Web. Derek Willis agrees with the idea of teaching newspaper folk to work harder with data, but wonders how it will be done. [...]
October 4th, 2007 at 10:47 am (#)
[...] ICM: You wrote on your weblog the other day: “But until and unless journalism schools show that data has any sort of importance to them, most journalism students only will be exposed to the possibilities, but not the actual process, of working with data on the Web.” How are you personally doing that at GWU, for instance. And what are some ways college media advisers could use to get students interested in the subject? [...]
October 7th, 2007 at 8:22 am (#)
[...] The Scoop » Blog Archive » Teaching Data on the Web (tags: data education journalism newspapers) [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 10:56 pm (#)
Derek, I agree with you, but…
I think there are some opportunities for students with a little self-initiative at the University of Missouri. If they went the “design your own educational model” route they could take advantage of computer science courses along with journalism courses. If they did that along with participating at NICAR, I think they could put themselves in a good position.
Students, who want to do data on the web stuff, don’t take this route at the University because they don’t realize they have that type of control over their education. Most of these students end up in the Convergence Sequence, but these courses don’t really address data on the web.
There is hope though. In the next couple of years, new real estate is being added to school and more professors are going to be hired.
The Convergence Sequence has already started making friends with the Computer Science department. The relationship appears to be more computer science students dabbling in journalism than the other way around.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:01 pm (#)
I’m teaching a similar course at Georgetown this semester called Computer Programming for the Humanities. The first two weeks, I was wondering why I let myself get talked into teaching the course because the concepts were all completely new to these graduate students. Now, about five weeks into the course, I am very pleased with the progress the students are making. They get it.
People have this odd reaction to the idea of teaching “technology” to journalism students. A video camera is a kind of technology. A typewriter is, too. So is paper for that matter. You do not need to be an engineer to type and you don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a computer. Journalism students can, and should, learn how to use computers and how to manipulate data. That’s what they do every day and it seems odd to me that people would suggest that it is somehow outside the scope of their work.
Of course, natural selection will take care of this. Journalists who are unwilling to learn the skills required to produce the most useful content for consumers will wither and those who are willing to learn will thrive.