Spokes: Medium: Western: Collaborative: Big Data to Promote Community Learning and Impact

California State L A University Auxiliary Services Inc., Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

The project will create a partnership among California State University Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles (LA) GEOHub, Community Partners, and the Social Equity Engagement geo-Data Scholars (SEEDS) Program to provide access to and greater utilization of the city's big data collection. The partnership will introduce GeoHub data as decision making tools to highly motivated, ethnically diverse, and civic-minded students and increase participation of citizens in using GeoHub data. The project activities will promote widespread access to and understanding of LA's open data portal among a broad cross-section of the population, especially groups that are traditionally disadvantaged and less likely to be digitally connected. It will provide training that will allow citizens and non-profits to become proficient in the use of big data, empower citizens so that they can see data-driven government in action and effectively participate in civic decision-making, and make local cities more livable and equitable for all. With citizen involvement, open data portals can become sustainable and independent of political changes in the local, state, or national governments. The City of Los Angeles will provide California State University Los Angeles, community partners, and non-profit organizations GeoHub accounts to access software and apps free of charge and train California State faculty members who will, in turn, train their students in GeoHub's data and visualization applications. The students will help Community Partners to train non-profit organizations to use GeoHib for all of their service needs. This approach will effectively reach large numbers of users and contributors in diversified communities. The project will produce course modules with GeoHub hands-on service learning activities in disciplines across humanities, social sciences, geosciences, political sciences, public health, and civil engineering. It will also generate data access and visualization manuals and support community-based research projects. The project plan aligns with the Western Big Data Hub big data education and literacy efforts and contributes to the Hub's cross-sector activities. This award is co-funded by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources (IUSE): EHR Program (NSF 17-590). IUSE supports projects that are designed to improve student learning through development of new curricular materials and methods of instruction and development of new assessment tools to measure student learning. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.