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Since its adoption in 2021, the Data Literacy and Data Culture Roadmap has been an important component of the data strategy, the new edition of which we have already reported on in the FDM blog. The roadmap developed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is intended to serve as a guide for a digital awakening in Germany and provide orientation for the responsible use of data. We have summarised the opportunities offered by the roadmap for you in this article.
Roadmap for Developing Data Skills
A large number of individual steps are required to achieve the data strategy’s goal of initiating an innovative data policy for Germany. For example, the BMBF is highlighting development perspectives with the roadmap, which specifies both concrete individual goals and measures to increase data expertise and establish a data culture in the country. In total, more than 20 experts from universities, associations, start-ups and other areas were appointed to draft a joint impulse paper.
The impulse paper, which is intended to further develop the teaching of data skills as well as to further advance target group outreach, focuses on four central fields of action:
- School education
- Basic and general education
- Vocational training
- Further training of expert competences
Options for action were explained and further research needs identified. The impulse paper focuses on measures to measure impact and recommends indexing indicators for data skills.
The BMBF has also published three groundbreaking transfer papers with specific recommendations for action as part of the Data Literacy and Data Culture Roadmap. These serve as a vehicle for implementing the recommendations for action to promote data literacy. They are divided into the three expert groups “Mobilise”, “Support” and “Network”. Further information on the transfer papers can be found on the BMBF website.
Data Literacy at RWTH Aachen University
RWTH Aachen University is also strongly promoting the topic of “data literacy”. With the “data.RWTH” project, those responsible are pursuing the goal of imparting data skills to students in an interdisciplinary and practical manner, systematically integrating them into the curricula and thus promoting the development of a university-wide data culture. Research data management (RDM) is an important part of data literacy, as sustainable data management is based on the ability to collect data in a critical manner and handle it responsibly. You can find out more about the data.RWTH project in our blog post. It remains to be seen how the teaching of data literacy, the understanding and critical scrutiny of data, will become firmly anchored in schools, universities and among researchers in the coming years. After all, what sounds good in theory is often difficult in practice and involves considerable challenges.
Learn More
If you have any questions about RDM in general, simply contact the IT-ServiceDesk. The RDM team looks forward to hearing from you.
Responsible for the content of this article is Lina-Louise Kaulbach.
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