Using Data Expedition as a Formative Assessment Tool in Data Science Education: Reasoning, Justification, and Evaluation

Abstract

The paper addresses the questions of data science education of current im-portance. It aims to introduce and justify the framework that allows flexibly evaluate the processes of a data expedition and a digital media created during it. For these purposes, the authors explore features of digital media artefacts which are specific to data expeditions and are essential to accurate evaluation. The ru-brics as a power but hardly formalizable evaluation method in application to digi-tal media artefacts are also discussed. Moreover, the paper documents the experi-ence of rubrics creation according to the suggested framework. The rubrics were successfully adopted to two data-driven journalism courses. The authors also formulate recommendations on data expedition evaluation which should take into consideration structural features of a data expedition, distinctive features of digital media, etc.