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Love Data Week at TXST

TXST Open Datathon Expectations

Step 1. Select a challenge topic below

Step 2. Craft a research question. i.e. What is the correlation between library learning space use and student seniority status? (You can also use the example research questions and open data resources in the prompts document to guide your analysis). 

Step 3. Explore the open-access data resources.

Step 4. Analyze the identified open data to help answer your research question.

Step 5. Interpreting your findings with data visualizations.

Step 6. Create a digital poster for your Datathon project, covering the problem statement, data source, methodology, findings, and implications. 

Step 7. Deposit your final digital poster and dataset into the TXST Dataverse Repository. 

Step 8. Deliver a 5-minute presentation of your digital poster.

Datathon Challenges

This is a Data Viz-a-Thon working with data about the Bobcat community. The TXST Department of Data, Analytics, and Institutional Research invites participants to use datasets from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to explore and address real-world issues in higher education. By analyzing the provided data, participants can develop innovative strategies and solutions to enhance understanding and decision-making in support of the Bobcat community and beyond.

Available Datasets: 

The Geospatial Insights Challenge invites participants to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial data to address pressing societal issues. Using publicly available geospatial datasets, participants are encouraged to develop innovative solutions aimed at enhancing community sustainability, resilience, and quality of life.

The Agricultural Economics challenge invites participants to analyze open-access data to identify issues related to agricultural economics or agricultural science and give potential solutions or recommendations based on your findings.  

This challenge invites participants to analyze open-access datasets related to Sustainability/ Smart Transportation to address pressing issues in modern transportation systems. Participants are encouraged to use data-driven approaches to generate insights, identify implications, and propose innovative solutions. Potential focus areas could include promoting sustainability, enhancing resilience, improving efficiency and mobility, increasing safety outcomes, or optimizing traffic flow. 

What is an Open Access Dataset?

Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used, and redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike. To summarize the most important:

  • Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.
  • Re-use and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit re-use and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
  • Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, re-use and redistribute - there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial’ restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial’ use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed.

Datathon Tookit