NODA2018

The session will be an opportunity to highlight experiences of university lecturers who were involved in teaching data journalism to give an overview of what worked and what didn't and reflect on opportunities for improvement.
Data/computational/precision journalism subjects are unique in enabling students to deal with numbers and carry out some statistical analysis to make the best out of available datasets. There may well be students that are not keen on working with math, especially if they had no expectation of having to come back to it when they enrolled into a journalism programme. The aim of this session is to know how teachers could motivate students to learn basic statistics and utilise tools to make the best of their data and identify subjects to write about as part of their learning experience.
Additionally, with the proliferation of new data every day, verifying authenticity and validity of data has become increasingly important, especially if the data obtained is from social media and other less reliable spaces. How could educational institutions cope with those demands in an age of numerous fake/unreliable information sources operated by bots working over time to produce fake news and propaganda? This session aims at answering this question with an emphasis on the need for educational institutes to take data journalism education needs into account.