Our 2030 Digital Strategy is all about making decisions with data. The Business Intelligence team works with departments across the University to collect, analyse and communicate data in a meaningful way and have recently moved to sit within the Digital Team, enabling us to work together to help the University community to make decisions based on data.
We have created a Data Community to help implement a more data-led culture across the University and enable our colleagues to improve their data literacy. Read this blog to learn everything you need to know about our Data Community.
Why is it important for us to be a data literate University?
The University is a complex organisation that produces a vast and ever-growing body of data that needs interpreting, analysing and presenting at pace. Data is at the heart of operations across the length and breadth of the University. However, as outlined by the recent Data Foundations Project Steering Group, there is a need for the University “to develop the necessary data literacy and lay the foundations for a more responsive data-led culture, academic and professional services staff need training, development, and support to enable and empower them to take ownership, and make more effective use, of the data and analyses available to them.”
In response to this need, we are working to develop a programme of data literacy for the University through 3 key activities:
- We have recruited a network of 30 Data Champions from across the University. This group are in the process of completing an eight month training programme with the Data Literacy Academy and will act as institution-wide champions of data literacy.
- We are liaising with colleagues across the University to define and develop a Data Literacy training programme that will be available to all University staff.
- We have established a new University Data Community.
What is the Data Community?
While our broader vision is to ensure our staff and students have the data literacy skills needed to thrive within an ever-evolving digital workspace, the Data Community is a way for you to get involved – to improve your data literacy and to become a key part of our mission to implement a more data-led culture across the University.
We aim to bring together a diverse range of data experts and consumers from across the University to share our skills and expertise. There will be regular training events and activities, a forum for sharing ideas, networking opportunities and maybe even some cake!
Why should I join the Data Community?
The Data Community provides you with a great opportunity to expand your knowledge, develop new skills and meet some like-minded people with whom you can discuss your challenges and share your expertise.
Our launch event took place on Thursday 21 September and was attended by 36 colleagues from across the University. It was a hugely successful hybrid event where we discussed some of the key principles of effective data visualisation, played with some poorly formatted data from the Daily Mail UK University league table data, and collected some brilliant ideas for how to take our community forward.
We will be holding our next community event on Wednesday 6 December 2023 from 1:30-4:00pm which you can join in-person or via Teams. Take a look below for info on how you can join the community to come along!
We will also soon be launching ‘Data Talks’, an informal monthly online meet-up in which we will watch a data-related TED Talk (or equivalent) followed up with a great discussion based on what we’ve seen.
Who can get involved and how?
Membership of the Data Community is open to all University of Exeter staff. If you’d like to join us then visit our Data Community Sharepoint site and please complete the membership form.
If you have any questions about the Data Community then please contact Dan Isaac (D.J.Isaac@exeter.ac.uk).
Visit our website for more info on our other Communities of Practice and products and services we offer.
-Written by Dan Isaac, Business Intelligence Officer & Data Visualisation Specialist