Christophe Debruyne, Laura Grehan, Mairéad Hurley, Anne Kearns, Ciaran O'Neill. One year of DALIDA Data Literacy Workshops for Adults: a Report. In Frédérique Laforest, Raphaël Troncy, Elena Simperl, Deepak Agarwal, Aristides Gionis, Ivan Herman, and Lionel Médini, editors, Companion of The Web Conference 2022, Virtual Event / Lyon, France, April 25 - 29, 2022, pages 403-407. ACM, 2022

1. One year of DALIDA Data Literacy
Workshops for Adults: a Report
Christophe Debruyne, Laura Grehan, Mairéad Hurley,
Anne Kearns, Ciaran O'Neill
2022-04-26 – Data Literacy Workshop @ The Web Conference

2. Data Literacy Discussion Workshops
for Adults (DALIDA) is funded under
the Science Foundation Ireland
DISCOVER Programme (grant
20/DP/8155).
Acknowledgements
In collaboration with:

3. DALIDA project
▶ Data Literacy Workshops for adults
▶ Focus on people from
underprivileged communities
▶ Driven by co-creation
Result: DEBUNKED workshop series
Context

4. • Introduction to the
topics, and the
process
• Gathering thoughts
Co-creation
WS 1
• Generating ideas
• What do you want
to cover?
• How do you want to
cover it?
Co-creation
WS 2
• Refine and deliver
Pilot WS
• More workshops than
planned, even though
some were cancelled!
8 workshops
Co-creation

5. ▶ The DEBUNKED workshops have been running for a year!
- The last session only yesterday 
▶ What do we want to tell?
- The final "format" of the DEBUNKED workshops
- The role of Education and Public Engagement training
- The challenges (and lessons learned)
- Participant evaluations!
Introduction

6. ▶ Cocreation:
- Topics relevant to audience
› Irish history
› COVID19
› …
- Keep it accessible
▶ COVID19:
- Keep it short
- How to get as much out of it?
Workshop structure
Structure:
1. Preparatory work
"Homework"
2. Part 1: Setting the scene
3. Part 2: Misrepresentation of Irish slave
history on social media
4. Part 3: The impact of mis- and
disinformation and how arm oneself
5. Part 4: Wrap-up
6. Follow-up post-workshop
Answers to questions, useful resources

7. EPE team in ADAPT
▶ Inspire the Irish Public
▶ Help that same public to participate in and
inform research
▶ As SFI requires all SFI funded researchers to
participate in EPE, deliver EPE training to
researchers (scribes, facilitators,…)
See EPE as an opportunity for researchers rather
than a chore.
 Training for researchers driving such projects(?)
 Seems to work well!
The role of the EPE team and EPE training

8. ▶ COVID19
- ZOOM-fatigue
- No-shows
- Dropping in late
› ZOOM updates…
- Dropping out early
Compared to onsite events
before the pandemic, people
had more difficulty keeping their
agenda free.
▶ Altered format OK
- Though some participants wanted
to cover more, whilst recognizing
an online format is exhausting.
▶ Online advertising had little to
no impact
▶ Keeping the workshop free
- As to keep it accessible
- Fees may have helped tackled no-
shows
Challenges

9. ▶ Reaching our intended audience
▶ Also related to COVID19, but warrants a
separate discussion
▶ Workshops were planned to be held in
infrastructure close to those
communities, which became impossible
due to sanitary measures.
- Access to computers
- Access to decent Internet
connections
- Managing families
- …
▶ Liaising with community liaisons
▶ Actively reaching out prospective
community liaisons
▶ Reaching those communities via
leaflets and community liaisons.
▶ While community liaisons were
instrumental in finding participants,
they were not a solution for the
more structural problems.
Challenges

10. ▶ Participants questioning facts
▶ Not all experts were always present,
and their presentations were pre-
recorded.
▶ What to do if participants disagree
and believe the Irish Slave meme,
for instance. Experts were able to
rebuttal, but they were not always
present.
▶ Anticipate the absence of experts
and anticipate these questions
- Experts know these (types) of
questions
- Compile a document for
facilitators
▶ Train facilitators in adequately
responding
Challenges

11. ▶ 8 workshops (other workshops took place after submission)
▶ 30 participant evaluation were taken into account
Positive:
▶ Workshop's content, speakers and facilitators were appreciated by all participants
▶ 80% reported learning something new
▶ Community-liaisons considered the workshops a success
▶ Mixing data literacy with other topics
Participant evaluation

12. ▶ 8 workshops (other workshops took place after submission)
▶ 30 participant evaluation were taken into account
Negative:
▶ Only 2 reported meeting people with different views
▶ Some found the misinformation surrounding the Irish slave meme more
memorable, others found the more statistical examples (COVID19, climate change)
more memorable.
- This mixed approach thus helped engaging people with differeing interests.
▶ People were divided about the online format.
Participant evaluation

13. Conclusions:
▶ Overall, we deem the workshops a
success, especially when we
consider the evaluation of
participants
▶ COVID19 was a challenge and
impacted reaching our audience
▶ Foresee back-up and training for
facilitators when domain experts are
not present.
Personally: cocreation means that I, as a
scholar, needed to learn how to let go.
Future work
▶ Availability of the material for others
▶ Ways to organize other instances of
debunked
Conclusions and Future Work

14. Questions?
Christophe Debruyne
c.Debruyne@uliege.be