Navigating Food Insecurity, Many Data Points at a Time: A Case Study of Georgia State University Library’s Public Interest Data Literacy Learning Lab Course

abstract: This article offers a case study of the two-semester experiential-learning course designed and taught in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 by the Georgia State University Library’s Research Data Services faculty. Tied to the Public Interest Data Literacy (PIDLit) grant-funded initiative, the Tackling Food Insecurity PIDLit Learning Lab course connected students with community partner organizations to apply data skills to address the real-world problem of food insecurity. The article details the partner-driven quantitative and qualitative data collection, analysis, and reporting activities in which students engaged. It next introduces the course content and array of assignments, available as open educational resources, which were geared to develop students’ data literacy skills. It then presents findings from mixed-methods course evaluation measures, including a quantitative pre-post assessment of students’ data literacy attitudes, knowledge, and skills teamed with a qualitative thematic analysis of their end-of-semester reflections. It concludes by offering lessons learned for others who wish to develop and teach similar applied data literacy courses or smaller-scale curricular units.