Hey Datascapers! Full disclosure: today's blog post is going to be short and sweet, as a transformer blew in our neighborhood causing everyone to lose power, so I'm working against the clock (i.e. my computer battery) to make sure readers get their regularly scheduled, high-quality Tartan Datascapes content! It's going to be a tough job, but it's worth it for all you awesome readers.
In today's installment of Tartan Datascapes, I am highlighting two year-long projects (with tons of data collection!) that myself and several colleagues from CMU Libraries are undertaking on campus. These projects, completed under the guidance of Ithaka S+R (an organization that works with various organizations to research, evaluate, and provide strategic guidance in a range of areas) and alongside dozens of other academic libraries across the country, will help us better understand two important data-themed topics on campus: (1) how instructors in the social sciences on campus use data in their classrooms, and (2) how our researchers engage with big data. While we're still in the early stages of the project planning, we are so excited to learn how we can better serve the needs of our campus community as we continue to innovate around teaching with data and big data research. You can read more about these projects here on the Ithaka S+R website.
Remember my recent blog post on ethnographic data (click here if you missed it)? That's exactly the kind of data we will be collecting in these two projects! We will be conducting dozens of interviews during the fall 2020 semester with CMU instructors, researchers, and various stakeholders, and coding these interviews in qualitative analysis software like NVivo to find themes which will inform how we shape our campus services here at CMU Libraries. In this context, coding refers to taking text-based data and assigning portions of the text to different codes that signify the theme of the text. It is an essential step in ethnographic data analysis, and will allow us to take over 40 hours of interviews and distill the major themes and needs into actionable goals and recommendations for services at CMU Libraries.
Are you interested in learning more about this project? Feel free to reach out to me (hgunderm@andrew.cmu.edu) and I would be more than happy to share details about how you can get involved.
Well, folks, I'm approaching the end of my computer battery and it's probably best for me to finish off this blog post now! Despite my obvious annoyance with electrical issues happening at the worst possible time (Murphy's law never fails!), experiences like this reiterate how important it is to me to make sure this blog gets out to our community on a regular basis. As always, I'm so proud to be able to write about the amazing datascapes across our university!
Until next time, stay safe, healthy, and may your research data be organized, documented, and tidy!