DiSC Workshop

Data in Social Context Workshop: More Information

"Big Data processes codify the past. They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that’s something that only humans can provide." Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction

The DiSC workshop is designed to encourage participants to explore project-based methods for teaching a creative and critical approach to data in social context. The success of this workshop depends on the collegiality, curiosity, and commitment of workshop participants to learn from each other, from structured activities, from discussion of rich texts, and from best practices of experienced instructors. The content of the workshop will connect specific requirements in Pathways to the most pressing social, economic, ethical, and political questions of the present and future. From computational fields, including data science, mathematics, statistics, and computer science, workshop participants will explore concepts such as veracity, probability, scale, and reliability that fulfill general education requirements at Virginia Tech for Quantitative and Computational Thinking. Yet the DiSC approach draws directly from the humanities by guiding students to interrogate why these concepts matter in their lives, across contemporary society, and especially at the intersection of data, identity, and power. The DiSC program thus connects “the power of mathematical thinking,” from Jordan Ellenberg, to the imperative “to understand ideas, values, and identities in cultural, temporal, and spatial contexts,” as defined by Virginia Tech’s general education requirement for Critical Thinking in the Humanities.

The workshop will explore the perspectives, theories, and insights of leading figures in data analytics, including most of the following:

• Shoshana Zuboff @shoshanazuboff
• Cathy O’Neil @mathbabedotorg
• Safiya Noble @safiyanoble
• Steven Strogatz @stevenstrogatz
• Virginia Eubanks @poptechworks
• Jordan Ellenberg @jsellenberg
• Frank Pasquale @FrankPasquale
• Lilly Irani @gleemie
• Mary Gray @marylgray
• Yanni Loukissas @yloukissas
• and more (suggestions welcome to @ethomasewing)

For each of these theorists and analysts, workshop participants will explore readings, talks, and interviews, discuss implications for courses and teaching, and examine their relevance to thinking about data in social context. Workshop participants will also discuss assignments, classroom activities, research projects, and other instructional methods that may be integrated into courses about data.

Expectations: All workshop participants must commit to the following:

1. an introductory meeting or phone conversation with the project director, between May 24 and June 5, 2019;
2. attending and participating fully in the three day workshop, June 11-13, 2019, approximately 10 am to 4 pm each day, on the Blacksburg campus;
3. participation in an afternoon session, the week of August 12, on the Blacksburg campus or remotely; and
4. attendance at monthly meetings, one afternoon a month, September to December 2019, to be scheduled as mutually convenient for workshop participants.

Stipends: All workshop participants will receive a stipend of $1000. Participants must be eligible to receive a stipend under the terms of a Graduate Teaching Assistant appointment.

Workshop directors: Tom Ewing, Department of History and College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and Mario Khreiche, ASPECT and Department of History

Contact information: Tom Ewing, etewing@vt.edu, 231-3212

Frequently Asked Questions available here

Workshop funded by VT Data & Decisions Stakeholders and 4-VA.