Discuss what your goals were entering this course. How did you work towards achieving these goals throughout the semester?

Entering this course, my main goal was to learn how to code and use R to create effective visualizations, as I knew that R was a powerful tool to know how to use. Over the course of this semester, by utilizing resources provided by course instructors, the internet, and other support services, I was able to accomplish this goal. My first three visuals were created using R. Throughout this process, and as my visuals increased in complexity (or at least my desire to create more complex visuals grew), I also grew more comfortable with data management in R, including using packages like tidyverse, as some of my visuals required me to do this, first, before using ggplot.

What was the most important lesson learned throughout the semester?

Although getting more familiar with a new software was incredibly valuable, I think another important lesson was recognizing the power, impact, and sway your visuals can have, if they are constructed correct and with the right evidence, emphasis, efficiency, and ethics. Conversely, poorly constructing a visual can have the opposite effect of what you intend, or just confuse your viewer. I find myself looking more critically at visuals in the paper and in the media now, as well as my course lectures, as I think about the message that the visual appears to be sending vs what the data (for example) may actually suggest.

What was your greatest challenge throughout the semester?

Beyond learning how to create visuals in an unfamiliar coding language, I think my greatest challenge was learning how to take a step back, and think about the message I really want to send with my visual. I had a tendency, in the beginning of the course, to jump right into creating a visual without thinking about how best to utilize my data to send a message. I think I’ve gotten better at this, although I’m still improving, and I came to really recognize value of peer feedback in making improvements I might never think of, because it seems “obvious” to me or I just didn’t consider it (whether in regards to writing or visuals).

How do you recommend improving the course design?

I think finding a better balance in the amount of writing in this course compared to data visualization would be beneficial. Although I appreciated thinking about how to structure my policy briefs differently depending on my audience, the workload became a lot at times, especially considering that every other week we also had to write a visual brief to post here as well as code a new visual (at least in the beginning of the semester). I do think the skills learned for each (writing for a different audience and thinking about how to best structure visuals) are all valuable, though, so I think it will be important to find a balance in what is dropped or kept to improve the course.