Workshops
October 2024 - Unlocking the Power of Community Data:
Visualizing and Sharing Your Local Data
Register for the workshop!
Contact: Professor Christopher J. Seeger
Session Dates:
Participant must attend all three dates to receive certificate of completion.October 1, 2024 - 1:30pm-3:30pm - Zoom Recording
October 9, 2024 - 9:00am-4:00pm - Onsite Hands on Workshop in Dubuque, Iowa
October 17, 2024 - 2:00pm-4:00pm - Zoom Link
The onsite location is:
Dubuque County Extension Office
14858 West Ridge Lane, Suite 2
Dubuque, Iowa 52003
Workshop Overview
Efforts to improve the quality of life and decision making in local communities can benefit through the use of measurable local data. However, many of the indicators that are informative measures of quality of life are not readily available or usable by local decision-makers. Local data on the number of recurring community events, use frequency of park shelter rentals, number of volunteer organizations, number of youth/adult parks and recreation participants, attendance rates at council/supervisor meetings, number of permits for home improvements, or the number of trees planted by the city are just a few examples of local measures tied to quality of life in communities. While these metrics may be already collected, they are not always publicized, or shared due to the skills required to manage, analysis, and visualize the data. While some local data might be aggregated to the county or state level, this data is often time-lagged or less granular than desirable for local community development and decision-making efforts that seek to improve resiliency and quality of life.
This workshop aims to:
- Increase local capacity for data literacy
- Increase technical skills to access and manage data
- Increase ability to visualize and share local data
Session 1, October 1 – Online (2 hours). Introduction to workshop; Overview of Community Data and Sharing; Assessment of data literacy skills. Introduction to data structures and management (Google Sheets Tabular/CSV Data, GIS and GeoJson spatial data); Preparing for the in-Person Workshop; Setting up a free Tableau Public and GitHub account; Q&A. Some 'homework' will be assigned to be completed prior to workshop session 2.
Session 2, October 9 – In Person (6 hours at a county Extension office). Participants will receive hands on training using Tableau Public with prepared data for their own county or city data. Additionally, some training using GitHub, Google Sheets and other open-source or free web-based software will be utilized during the exercises. Througout the workshop, participants will be creating several visualizations with Tableau for use in dashboards and then publishing these visualizations. At the end of the workshop, participants will identify their your own data to work on during the next week and present this visualization at session 3.
Between session 2 and 3, participants will prepare prepare and publish a visualization of their own community data. These visualizations will be reviewed and discussed in session 3. As participants prepare the visualization, they will have opportunities to consult online with an instructor and utilize supplemental instructional materials produced by the CED team.
Session 3, October 17 – Online (2 hours). Participants will have an opportunity to publish and present the visualization they have worked on the previous week. Completed projects and training materials will be archived and made available via the ISU Indicators Website and/or GitHub. During the session, additional tips and tricks for working with Tableau will be provided in addition to recomendations for next steps to advance the participant's learning.
Outcomes
Upon conclusion of the workshop, participants will be able to utilize basic data science skills to manage tabular data using Google Sheets and to save this data in a delimited format to be shared or utilized in Tableau Public. Participants will be able to import and visualize data to produce a dashboard published on Tableau Public. Once a student has completed the prescribed exercises, they will have an opportunity in session three to demonstrate their knowledge by publishing a local data set. For those participants that are interested, instructional material on how to embed this visualization onto their agency website or into a GitHub will be provided.
Software and Equipment Required
Participants will use their own computer for the online portion of the workshop. All materials and software is web-based, only the data utilized for the workshop will need to be downloaded to the participant's local machine. For the on-site workshop, participants are encouraged to bring their own device. However, CED does have a limited number of workshop laptops available for use during the workshop for those that need a machine. Please arrange for using a CED laptop prior to October 4th. Participants are encouraged to bring a USB thumb drive to copy any files they work on if using a CED machine.
Facilities and Accommodations on October 9th
Refreshments will be provided during the morning/afternoon of the workshop.
Lunch is not provided, but we will take an hour off to allow for those that want to go get lunch to do so.
If you need any additional accommodations during the workshop, please contact Professor Seeger.