Volunteer Your Data
Share your interesting, non-sensitive data sets with UMSI students for analysis
Visit the official UMSI website for the most up-to-date information on client based courses
Information on the site you are currently visiting is no longer being updated as of Summer 2021
Share your data with UMSI students
Why should I share my data with students?
Volunteering your data helps UMSI students grow their data analysis skills—and could result in useful findings for your organization.
While we can't guarantee that sharing data will result in any useful outcomes, in some instances students are able to deliver valuable analyses, visualizations, or data manipulation tools that might otherwise not be accessible to some organizations.
Sharing data may also be a helpful precursor to larger projects via our client-based courses and programs, like SI 485: Data/Information Analysis.
What will students do with my data?
Several of our courses require students to work with complex data sets—mostly for analysis and visualization.
Students use the data you share to:
Answer difficult questions which require deep analysis;
Explore data for new or unforeseen connections;
Build new tools to extract useful predictions or information;
Visualize data or findings from data to help present it in a new or more illuminating way.
Although students have access to data sourced from government and other public sources, it's preferable for students to work with complex, unique data sets, and, where possible, to help translate their analyses and visualizations into findings, recommendations, and tools that help solve real-world challenges. By volunteering your data, you offer students the opportunity to grow their skills and help your organization discover something useful or solve a challenge that requires data analysis.
Some of the courses in which students use complex data sets include:
How do I share my data?
If you'd like to share your data sets with UMSI students, please complete the form linked below and tell us in the Project Idea field about the data you're willing to share.
If you'd like to know more about sharing your data or have other related questions, please send your inquiries to umsi.client.engagement@umich.edu.
About UMSI
The University of Michigan School of Information was chartered in 1996 as a new school within the University with the mission to conduct research in, and to teach about, topics at the intersection of people, information, and technology; its roots trace back to 1926 as a library science department. Our award-winning faculty have training in computer science, library science, business, psychology, economics, education, history, and other fields, and they investigate topics ranging from digitization of archival documents to relationships on social media, from data analysis using machine intelligence to the economics of information. The school comprises about 50 faculty, 50 staff, 60 PhD students, 400 professional master’s degree students and 150 bachelor’s degree students.