Data Literacy in the Classroom: Experiences and Evaluation of the Priimkoslovje (»Surname-Ology«) Project

Ana Farič, Janez Demšar, Anja Mejač, Maja Vičič Krabonja, Andrej Flogie, Urška Martinc and Blaž Zupan

Summary:  Data literacy is one of the key competencies that students need to be prepared for their future careers as well as for informed decision-making in their personal lives. The project A Pinch of Artificial Intelligence (Pumice) explores approaches to teaching artificial intelligence and related topics within existing school curricula. Many of the developed learning scenarios focus primarily on data analysis. This paper presents an evaluation of the Priimkoslovje activity, which is based on one such scenario. The activity is designed as a problem-based learning task in which students use the data analysis tool Orange to learn about working with data, data visualisation and clustering methods. The pilot implementation involved 905 students and 49 teachers from 28 Slovenian schools. The results indicate that the students successfully completed the challenge, while the teachers assessed the approach as effective in motivating students and improving their data literacy. The teachers also expressed a need for additional teaching materials, training and technical support. The paper highlights the challenges related to teaching data literacy and proposes directions for future research and improvement.