DATALIT - Data Literacy at the interface of higher education and busines, 2020
Nowadays data literacy is widely considered a critical skill to have in the 21st century. Employees with data literacy skills have become highly valuable in today’s economy and labour market: more than ever before, employers demand some degree of data literacy from all employees, regardless of the professional role.
Since data are used in a multitude of domains, data literacy is today an essential skill also for professionals like journalists, policy makers, etc. It is also a powerful enabler of civic engagement, as it empowers individuals and communities to keep governments transparent and accountable.
The project DATALIT aims at:
- offering to university students across different Faculties, the opportunity to reach a suitable level of data knowledge that they can use and apply appropriately and diversely throughout their personal and professional lives,
- Narrowing the gap between business and academia and putting EU enterprises in direct contact with potential future employees or business partners properly trained to exploit data effectively.
To meet this challenge, DATALIT will develop and pilot an approach based on a long-term partnership of academia, business and educational partners. After an in-depth research phase, aimed at identifying best practices and experiences of data literacy inclusion in EU higher education and to understand better the needs and expectations of the target groups (students, HE professionals, employers), the partners will define a common understanding of data literacy as competence and design a syllabus to orient the creation of data courses. In parallel, the partners will develop a digital learning environment to integrate the class-based courses and a sound validation and certification system connected to the EQF, ECTS and Europass systems. The outputs developed will be piloted by the Universities involved and by students who will have the opportunity to apply their data skills through internship experiences in EU enterprises.
Impact:
- Defining a common understanding of what a data literate person is supposed to know;
- Fostering a culture of data literacy among European citizens;
- Making graduate students acquire the data skills they need to succeed in the job market.