Amman- 22 November 2022
In the context of the DAAD funded project “Introducing Data Literacy at GJU (IDL@GJU)”, the School of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (SEEIT) held a dissemination event on data literacy on Nov 1, 2022.
The event hosted seven faculty professors from five German partner universities: Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Ernst-Abbe-University of Applied Sciences Jena, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Fulda University of Applied Sciences, and Technical University Brandenburg. The project is coordinated by Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. The dissemination event summarized the achieved outcomes in the two-year project term.
At the beginning of the event, Prof. Dr. Reiner Finkeldey (the German Vice President for International Affairs of the GJU) welcomed the guests. After that, the event started officially with a series of talks as follows. First, Prof. Dr. Christina B. Class briefly introduced the concept of data literacy and its competencies. Second, Prof. Dr. Rainer Herpers presented the project objectives, its activities in 2021 and 2022 as well as the project results.
Third, Dr. Mustafa Shawaqfeh shortly presented the questionnaire that was developed as part of the project to evaluate students’ data literacy competences and discussed main results results. The survey was answered by 497 GJU students (including first-year till fourth-year students) and the survey questions aimed, among others, at measuring students’ awareness of various challenges regarding the use of data.
Fourth, Dr. Abdullah Alfarrarjeh presented how data literacy competencies were integrated into the GJU study curricula. Fifth, Hannah Schepper and Nora Schulze (students from Technical University of Brandenburg) shared their experience about what they learned through the student training workshop on data literacy in May 2022.
At the end of the event, a panel discussion was conducted between the GJU vice president for international affairs, Prof. Dr. Zaid Albashairah the chairman assistant of the Accreditation Commission and Quality Assurance for Higher Education Institutions, Prof. Dr. Rainer Herpers, and Prof. Dr. Christina B. Class.
The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Julia Schnitzer and the panelists discussed the importance of data literacy in their personal activities and professional work. Also, the panelists shed the light on the immense need of raising the awareness of data literacy for people starting preliminary school levels (not until reaching higher education studies) given that people nowadays depend on data (from a plethora of sources) in their daily routine activities. After the first part the panel was opened to include the audience which took part in the very lively discussion on data literacy.
It is worth mentioning that the faculty professors from the German partners universities consisted of Prof. Dr. Rainer Herpers, Prof. Dr. Christina B. Class, Prof. Dr. Paul Grimm, Prof. Dr. Bettina Harriehausen, Prof. Julia Schnitzer, Prof. Dr. Jan-Torsten Milde, and Prof. Dr. Frank Klingert. From the GJU side, a committee of five faculty members steered the project collaboratively with the German professors and this committee includes: Dr. Dhiah el Diehn Abou-Tair, Dr. Mustafa Shawaqfeh, Dr. Amani Abu Jabal, Ms. Jacqueline Rogler, and Dr. Abdullah Alfarrarjeh.