Over the past week, we have begun transitioning away from the collection and reorganization of data stories and towards the meat of our project – data stories integration. This integration will be a way for us to increase the impact and visibility of the stories. By fitting them into the Data Management Education Modules, we will connect the stories’ anecdotal information to the educational and instructive material found in the modules.
I’m excited about integrating the stories because I feel like juxtaposing these two approaches to data management education could add a lot of value to both the modules and the stand-alone stories. The modules already present the educational information in a way that’s blessedly straightforward and easy to understand – a challenge, considering its technical nature. Sprinkle some personal narratives into the mix, and you have a recipe for a powerful educational tool!
To maximize a story’s effect, we will pair it up with the education module that best matches the data topic. (For example, The Case of the Missing Research Protocol addresses the importance of good metadata, so it could be paired with Lesson 7: Metadata). Many stories reference more than one data management issue. In these cases, we may tailor the stories to fit multiple modules. And since some of our stories focus on the same subtopics, we will likely have multiple versions of the modules, with each version telling a different data story.
Right now, I’m finalizing some first attempts at data integration. Next, Stacy and I will gather feedback from the working group to determine some areas of improvement. It’s my hope that after some tweaking, these integrated stories will serve as models for the rest of our project.
It’s very exciting to get ‘The Case of the Missing Research Protocol’ posted and to see what a great start you’ve gotten on integrating it into the metadata lesson. I’m looking forward to showing our drafts to the rest of the working group for comment!