Enhancing scientific data literacy in college students: Experience and lessons learned

Data literacy education is a new service territory for many academic libraries. This paper reports our experience from a two-year Science Data Literacy (SDL) project through four areas of activities: (1) survey on faculty’s perceptions and practices in data management, (2) design of SDL learning modules, (3) delivery of the course, and (4) assessment of learning outcomes. We found from the faculty survey that there was a low level of awareness of research data management importance, methods, and tools in general and that the data management practice is associated with the size and complexity of the data produced by their research. Science data literacy training was difficult to be integrated into formal curricula due to their structure, even though the need for such training was on the rise. The lessons learned from the two-year project and how libraries and library and information science education might turn this challenge into opportunities are discussed.