Final Report - DATALIT - Data Literacy at the interface of higher education and business

Data literacy is a term broadly used to define the ability to read, work with, analyse, visualise, and argue with data, in order to derive meaningful information and new knowledge. It is increasingly considered to be a life skill in the 21st century, employees with data literacy skills have become highly valuable in today's economy and labour market more than ever before. Regardless of the sector, data literacy skills are more and more often requested to new employees. We are currently living in a data driven society in which data are used in a multitude of domains, therefore data literacy is today an essential skill for a very wide range of professionals such as journalists, policy makers, healthcare consultants, and so on. Higher Education sector has to be prepared to provide students with these essential skills, not only in the technical departments but also in other departments more related to humanities. Moreover, data literacy plays the role of enabler for what it concerns civic engagement. In fact, data literate citizens contribute to keep governments transparent and accountable, tackle local issues, and navigate their own data ecosystems. From this premise, the project DATALIT aims to achieve the following main objectives: o offering to university students across different faculties, the opportunity to reach a suitable level of data knowledge that they can use and apply appropriately and diversely throughout their personal and professional lives. o narrowing the gap between business and academia and putting EU enterprises in direct contact with potential future employees or business partners properly trained to exploit data effectively. To meet this challenge, DATALIT has developed and piloted an innovative approach based on a long-term partnership of academia, business and educational partners. In the initial phase of the project, partners have conducted an in-depth research aimed at identifying best practices and experiences of data literacy inclusion in EU higher education. In this phase partners have also identified needs and expectations of the target groups (students, HE professionals, employers). This initial phase has informed the definition of a syllabus including competences on data literacy. Moreover, the consortium developed a digital learning environment to integrate a class-based courses and a sound validation and certification system, based on LEVEL5 methodology, connected to the EQF, ECTS and EUROPASS systems. The learning path was piloted by the Universities involved in collaboration with the business partners. In this way, students had the opportunity to apply their data skills through internship experiences in business contexts. The competences acquired by the students were validated and connected to European validation and certification instruments with the use of the LEVEL5 methodology. A number of 416 participants experimented the DATALIT approach in practical contexts, 150 of them acquiring a certification related to the data literacy competences developed. Two training events have been conducted for the training of the trainers interested in adopting the DATALIT approach in their settings. The first event that for the pandemic situation was held online, was mainly focused on the trainers that supported the participants of the pilots. The second training, firstly planned in as a face to face event and then moved in a hybrid format, was organized in the final phase of the project with the aim of involving trainers interested in reusingthe DATALIT methodology and tools after the end of the project. The dissemination of the project has been implemented through several initiatives conducted in collaboration by all partners during the project period. Amongst the most relevant events there is the participation to the two edition of Erasmus days in 2020 and 2021. The final conference in which despite the COVID-19 a large number of stakeholders have been involved in presence and reached through the online event. Moreover, in each country a local event to disseminate and valorise the results of the project were organized. Memorandum of Understanding with other organizations have been signed to establish connections with potentials stakeholders that would be interested in the adoption of DATALIT results in their contexts.