Archaeological Data Literacy Practicum Syllabus

Archaeological Data Literacy Practicum A professional development course Welcome to the Archaeological Data Literacy Practicum, a professional development course. The Alexandria Archive Institute's Data Literacy Program designed this stand-alone course to provide skills-building in archaeological data literacy outside of degree or certificate-granting institutions. We hope this pilot helps you further your educational goals in archaeology, whether they're to improve your skills or to help others. Below, we introduce the course in a format similar to that of a higher education course in the United States. It outlines the logistics of the course, provides a description of the course alongside objectives, and then lists course requirements, policies for participation, and a timeline. This syllabus is a living document and will change based on course feedback from the pilot and future iterations of the practicum. We've licensed this syllabus (and the course overall) with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license no matter the iteration. This means that as long as you attribute us, feel free to use, reuse, adapt, and build upon anything this course provides for your own work. Duration: Five weeks Meeting Times: Three synchronous meetings. Pilot dates as follows: 1. Introduction meeting - 3 October 2025 2. Mid-course meeting - 17 October 2025 3. Presentation meeting - 31 October 2025 4. Optional mini-conference to present final projects - 22 November 2025 All synchronous meetings will begin at 9:00 am United States Mountain Time Zoom Office Hours : All Wednesdays in October 2025 at 2:30 pm United States Mountain Time or by appointment Expected Workload: 4 hours per week, 20 hours of training total VERSION: 1.0 - Pilot LICENSE: CC BY 1 Purpose/Course Objective: To develop archaeological data literacy skills by connecting abstracted field skills with data created by participants to create a communicative output. Participants incorporate this output with developing portfolio materials that demonstrate data literacy skills applicable in archaeology and other fields. Course Description: The Archaeological Data Literacy Practicum is a skills-building course. Through a combination of abstracted “field work" and solo and collaborative online work, participants will learn the foundational skills of archaeological data literacy over roughly twenty (20) hours of training that bridges field, data, and interpretive skills. Participants will learn the foundational components of archaeological data literacy by exploring how to read, work with, analyze, argue, and communicate with data. Understanding these components will provide participants a foundation in data literacy and help them cultivate the archaeology and data skills related to each week's component. We designed this course as a combination of synchronous meetings and asynchronous work to develop participants' skills and literacies over five weeks. Each week focuses on a different archaeological data literacy component, with lectures and activities that allow participants to learn about and then practice those skills at their own pace. Each week is accessible by any participant with an internet connection, a web browser, and an external environment that they can use to create observational data to use in future weeks' outcomes. All required readings, tutorials, and lectures are open access for participants, with some traditional access recommended readings for each week supplied by instructors or facilitators. Students will learn basic archaeological data skills for the field and lab. They will develop these skills over the course of the program with introductory lectures (provided during synchronous meetings) or recorded videos followed by hands-on work that will refine those skills through physical survey and digital laboratory work. Skills include: - Slow observation techniques relevant to survey and artifact analysis - Hand drawn mapping, referencing maps in space to other established maps, and introductions to digital mapping and mapping resources - Experience with online data creation, entry, management, analysis, cleaning, and collaboration - Data communication, presentation, and critical feedback - Introductions to broader community engagement research dissemination, portfolio development, and public outreach By the second week, participants will take charge of their own learning using a combination of pre-recorded lectures and guided tutorials to create materials for portfolios that demonstrate skills development that scaffold towards a deliverable project. 2 Course Requirements Lectures: Lectures provide participants with targeted background information regarding the data literacy topic of the week. These include skills-focused lectures that introduce them to how to engage with or apply specific data literacy components. These are also opportunities for participants to workshop ideas, share struggles with the materials, and discuss the presented topics. Lecture attendance is vital to ensure a collaborative work environment and is part of fulfilling the portfolio materials for the practicum. Assigned Videos: This course also assigns a number of videos either made for this course or by affiliated researchers. All videos have been watched and vetted by AAI/OC staff for quality and adherence to the curriculum. If you have difficulty accessing a particular video please contact your instructor. If you believe a video should be removed or altered, please make AAI/OC facilitators aware and note this in your evaluations. Videos are assigned to allow participants to work with their schedules and cut down on mandatory attendance meetings. However, watching assigned videos is integral to completing the course and should be considered as important as attending the synchronous lectures. Assignments: Each week covers a different archaeological data literacy component and includes videos or lectures to attend or listen to, self-paced activities, and deliverables that participants will submit to facilitators. Assignments vary by week, with self-paced activities and deliverables due before the next scheduled synchronous lecture. Lectures and videos should be attended or watched before the following synchronous meeting. All readings – outside of assigned exercises, tutorials, or Digital Data Stories – are optional. Assignments build on each other and will be part of the portfolio product of the course. Completing these, and turning them in, in a timely manner to ensure sufficient time for quality feedback, is vital for demonstrating engagement with and execution of the learning objective for each week. Practicum policies Grading / Feedback: This course does not provide a grade on any materials or for the training overall. However, facilitators will provide feedback on all submitted materials so that participants can continue to develop their skills and grow from those creations. In addition, participants will provide feedback on each other's work to evaluate their communicative goals and to develop skills in compassionate critical critique. The goal for feedback in this practicum is to simulate the sort of feedback participants might get on the job, such as from a supervisor or colleague; community members or the public; or potentially through peer review of an article. Incomplete Portfolios: Participants who do not submit all the scaffolding portfolio materials do not demonstrate the full set of skills development. Facilitators will consider this the equivalent of not having fully completed the practicum. Attendance: While this is an ungraded course, attendance of synchronous meetings are critical to create a congenial and collaborative research community. Participants who do not attend all meetings will be dropped from the practicum or may be asked to submit additional portfolio elements to demonstrate engagement with the materials taught and discussed in a missed synchronous meeting. 3 Code of Conduct and Accessibility: Participants will abide by this practicum's code of conduct, available here . Participants may also be required to adhere to any local codes of conduct or policies as governed by your home institutions. The AAI/OC will try to ensure accessibility options are taken into account including: engaging closed captioning and making recordings available as needed. Academic Integrity/Honor Code Statement: All work you do for this course is expected to be the result of your own personal thoughts, research, and self-expression because this course is designed to encourage learning rather than getting answers "right". Furthermore, it should predominately be original work done specifically and completely for this course. Ethical conduct, meaning working with honesty, integrity, and respect for all members of the practicum, participants and instructors, is encouraged and emphasized in our work to cultivate data literacy. When using the ideas of someone else or a response created or cleaned by what is colloquially known as artificial intelligence (AI), you must cite those people or provide full transcripts for your AI interaction. We define full transcripts for an AI interaction as: providing the name of AI tool you used (ChatGPT, Grammerly, Gemini, Microsoft Co-pilot, etc.), whether or not it was a free or paid version, a screen capture that includes the prompts or questions you used to query the AI and/or a saved version of the original work before applying the AI assistant, copies of the response from the AI (screencapture) to your query(ies) and/or the AI altered version after applying the AI assistant, and then the final version of the product. If you use AI at multiple steps please include materials representing all interactions. You are responsible for knowing the definition of academic dishonesty and to know what is or is not plagiarism. If you are unfamiliar with these, please check your academic institution for definitions of academic dishonesty and plagiarism. There is also an extensive Wikipedia page on plagiarism and the company Grammerly, which is an AI writing tool, also has a blog explaining different kinds of plagiarism . Any participant plagiarizing, or in other ways not submitting authentic assignments, will be removed from the course or asked to redo portfolio elements to demonstrate their own skills development rather than that completed by another person or technology. If you have questions about any part of this syllabus please reach out to the Practicum Facilitator (Dr. Paulina F. Przystupa) at [email protected] or the Practicum ombudsperson (Dr. Sarah Kansa) at [email protected] . 4 Course Schedule This section provides information on each week's learning objectives, major topics, assignments, readings, and additional materials for participants to work with each week. Full references for linked materials are available in the Material and reference list . Week 1, October 3: Synchronous online meeting and self-paced assignments Learning Objective: Understand what it means to be able to "read" data Major topics Assignments and readings 1. Introductions 2. Clean data practices and principles 3. Data types and archaeological recording 4. Archaeological data creation from survey 1. Read and use Learn to Conduct a Basic Archaeological Survey to create the deliverables for this week 2. Submit: a. A scan or photograph of the hand drawn route map you produced through doing Learn to Conduct a Basic Archaeological Survey Optional additional materials: 1. Gabbing about Gabii for more on data types 2. The Road Most Traveled Digital Data Story for more information on pedestrian survey and slow observation 3. On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz for more on slow observation Week 2, October 10: Asynchronous self-paced assignments and videos Learning objective: Understand what it means to "work with" data Pre-recorded videos Assignments and readings 1. Finding reliable and usable maps online 2. Introduction to Geographic Information Systems 1. Scan or digitize your ten survey forms 2. Redraw your survey map on an existing map (physical or digital) and mark the 10 spots you stopped at for your survey points and share this redrawn version 3. Use Going from Notes to Data to turn your observation forms into a digital table 4. Submit: a. Re-drawn route map b. Scanned copies of your 10 survey forms c. Digital table of your observations Optional additional materials: 1. Gabbing about Gabii for more examples of table headings and data types 5 Week 3, October 17: Synchronous online meeting and self-paced assignments Learning objective: Understand what it means to and how to "analyze" data Meeting topics Assignments and readings 1. Creating, cleaning, and collating archaeological data a. Guest presentation by Dr. Sarah Whitcher-Kansa 2. Making archaeological data aggregation easier 3. Archaeological data analysis basics 1. Clean the whole data set on your own (with or without Open Refine) 2. Consider a research question you'd like to address with the cohort's data 3. Analyze your cleaned data and create: a. A table that summarizes the overall data set in some way (a pivot table) b. A chart or graph (abstracted from the data) c. Have a preliminary answer to your question based on the evidence from the data set 4. Submit: a. Submit your draft research question b. Your cleaned data set c. The table, chart or graph, and preliminary answer Optional additional materials: 1. Video " Overview of Using OpenRefine to Clean Archaeological Data " 2. Gabbing about Gabii for more on how to create clean data 3. Cow-culating Your Data in Spreadsheets and R for an introduction to data analysis, including how to make a pivot table, in spreadsheets and R 6 Week 4, October 24: Asynchronous self-paced assignment and videos Learning objective: Learn what it means to "argue" with data and how to do so Pre-recorded videos Assignments and readings 1. What do you mean I don't have a question? 2. Archaeological interpretation and creating for specific audiences 1. Pick: a. Your archaeological audience for your practicum output b. A communication mode for your final data-driven narrative product c. A peer to review your work 2. Use Turning Data into Narrative with the clean data from the practicum and create draft narratives that answer, explain, or describe your research question 3. Read any of the published responses from the journal Epoiesen 4. Submit: a. Your selections for audience, mode, and peer reviewer b. Draft narratives based on the narrative lenses introduced in Turning Data into Narrative c. Prepare a two-minute presentation on the draft or ideas for your narrative product Optional additional materials: 1. Play Data stories to disrupt and delight to consider what medium you'd like to create for your data-driven narrative product 2. The Antiracist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez to explore how to give compassionate critique 3. The Critical Response Process by Liz Lerman and John Borstel for more on critical but encouraging feedback Week 5, 31 October: Synchronous meeting and self-paced assignments Learning objective: Communicate with data to your peers Meeting topics Assignments and readings 1. How to be a good peer reviewer to yourself and others 2. Live presentations of participants' narrative product draft or idea 3. Responses to the narrative product ideas 1. Prepare a formal response to one other piece based on the presentations (not the one you provided peer review feedback to) 2. Refine your work based on feedback from your peer reviewer 3. Submit: a. Final narrative product b. Your formal response 7 Material and reference list These references are listed in order of appearance in the syllabus or are suggestions for further reading on the topics presented. If any links navigate to a broken page, please check the Wayback Machine for an archived copy of the material. Learn about the Data Literacy Program at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M70P0X5p Read "An Archaeological Data Literacy Practicum: A Supplement To Alternative Field Schools" by P.F. Przystupa from the November 2024 issue of The SAA Archaeological Record to learn more about the practicum : https://mydigitalpublication.com/article/An+Archaeological+Data+Literacy+Practicum%3A++A +Supplement+to+Alternative+Field+Schools/4888283/835963/article.html Or explore the Practicum website at: https://alexandriaarchive.org/digital-data-stories/archaeological-data-literacy-practicum/ Learn more about the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en Find the Archaeological Data Literacy Practicum (ADLP) Code of Conduct here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HFX4VE0noa29xaMiv71u1gqAILcQApIR-0H8OQWc8fY/ edit?usp=sharing Explore the Wikipage on plagiarism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism Read the Grammerly article on plagiarism: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/plagiarism/types-of-plagiarism/ Here's the link for Learn to Conduct a Basic Archaeological Survey by P. F. Przystupa (2025) from the Alexandria Archive Institute/Open context is available at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7GX48Q8 Gabbing About Gabii: Going From Notes to Data to Narrative by L. M. Dennis & P. F. Przystupa (2022) from the Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context is available at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7DV1H1R The Road Most Traveled: An Archaeological Survey Guide by P. F. Przystupa & L. M. Dennis (2024) from the Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context is available at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M79S1P6F On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz (2013) from Scribner. Learn more at https://alexandrahorowitz.net/On-Looking 8 Going from Notes to Data by P. F. Przystupa (2025) from the Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context is available at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M72R3PTR Watch "Overview of Using OpenRefine to Clean Archaeological Data" on YoutTube at: https://youtu.be/pNJ22MaMGY0 Cow-culating your data with spreadsheets and R by P. F. Przystupa & L. M. Dennis (2022) from the Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context is available at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M73N21HR Turning Data into Narrative by L. M. Dennis and P. F. Przystupa (2025) from the Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context can be found at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7T72FMF Explore the publications of Epoiesen at: https://epoiesen.carleton.ca/ Data stories to disrupt and delight by P. F. Przystupa (2025) from the Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context. Find the full Digital Data Story at: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7X928FR Or play the game part of the Digital Data Story here: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7Z31WSJ The Anti-racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom by F. R. Chavez (2021) from Haymarket Books. Learn more at: https://www.antiracistworkshop.com/the-antiracist-writing-workshop Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process: A Method for Getting Useful Feedback on Anything You Make, from Dance to Dessert by L. Lerman and J. Borstel (2003) from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. Get your copy at: https://www.danceexchange.org/merchandise/books 9