Jeffrey Oliver
Data Science Specialist
University of Arizona
Megan Senseney
Department Head, Office of Digital Innovation & Stewardship
University of Arizona
Across disciplines, rapidly growing interest in digital and data-intensive scholarship creates a largely unmet need for critical training in technical skills. To address this need, the University of Arizona libraries allocated funding to test a proof of concept, one-year pilot with four graduate fellows. Our program, the Digital Scholarship and Data Science Fellowship (DS2F), is intended to build capacity for campus-wide training in data and computational scholarship. It address three known challenges in contemporary higher education: (1) insufficient training for data-intensive, computational research within subject disciplines; (2) uneven attention to digital pedagogy and strategies for teaching technical concepts within graduate training programs; and (3) a need for ongoing development of modular curricula that can be integrated into the classroom and extracurricular workshops or used independently by scholars and researchers at the point of need. Our pilot launched in January 2020 with a series of workshops whereby library subject matter experts trained graduate students on technical and pedagogical skills. In turn, the students embarked on a process of self-directed learning with projects related to digital scholarship and data science, culminating in a series of open workshops that extend their knowledge to the campus community. Librarians’ instructional sessions (1) build connections between the cohort and mentors, (2) teach the basics of instructional design of short-term, modular workshops, (3) convey best practices in digital pedagogy, and (4) discuss open educational resources and open licensing. Early indicators from our pilot suggest that the model is successful and extensible to the greater academic library community. Authors: Jeffrey C. Oliver, Jennifer T. Nichols, Megan F. Senseney
