The Feminist Pedagogy Project

Author: Mahoney, J.

Data Fail: Teaching Data Literacy with African Diaspora Digital Humanities

Author(s):	Mahoney, J. Risam, R. & Nassereddine, H.
Date:	2020
Publication:	The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy
Citation:	Mahoney, J., Risam, R., & Nassereddine, H. (2020). Data Fail: Teaching Data Literacy with African Diaspora Digital Humanities. The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, 18. https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/data-fail-teaching-data-literacy-with-african-diaspora-digital-humanities/

Section on webpage:	Critical Data Justice Literature
Tenets:	Using technology intentionally to build communities and enhance learning.
Annotation:	(Abstract) This essay examines the authors’ experiences working collaboratively on Power Players of Pan-Africanism, a data curation and data visualization project undertaken as a directed study with undergraduate students at Salem State University. It argues that data-driven approaches to African diaspora digital humanities, while beset by challenges, promote both data literacy and an equity lens for evaluating data. Addressing the difficulties of undertaking African diaspora digital humanities scholarship, the authors discuss their research process, which focused on using archival and secondary sources to create a data set and designing data visualizations. They emphasize challenges of doing this work: from gaps and omissions in the archives of the Pan-Africanism social movement to the importance of situated data to the realization that the original premises of the project were flawed and required pivoting to ask new questions of the data. From the trials and tribulations—or data fails—they encountered, the authors assess the value of the project for promoting data literacy and equity in the cultural record in the context of high school curricula. As such, they propose that projects in African diaspora digital humanities that focus on data offer teachers the possibility of engaging reluctant students in data literacy while simultaneously encouraging students to develop an ethical lens for interpreting data beyond the classroom.

February 11, 2026

Data Fail: Teaching Data Literacy with African Diaspora Digital Humanities

Author(s):	Mahoney, J. Risam, R. & Nassereddine, H.
Date:	2020
Publication:	The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy
Citation:	Mahoney, J., Risam, R., & Nassereddine, H. (2020). Data Fail: Teaching Data Literacy with African Diaspora Digital Humanities. The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, 18. https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/data-fail-teaching-data-literacy-with-african-diaspora-digital-humanities/

Section on webpage:	Critical Data Justice Literature
Tenets:	Using technology intentionally to build communities and enhance learning.
Annotation:	(Abstract) This essay examines the authors’ experiences working collaboratively on Power Players of Pan-Africanism, a data curation and data visualization project undertaken as a directed study with undergraduate students at Salem State University. It argues that data-driven approaches to African diaspora digital humanities, while beset by challenges, promote both data literacy and an equity lens for evaluating data. Addressing the difficulties of undertaking African diaspora digital humanities scholarship, the authors discuss their research process, which focused on using archival and secondary sources to create a data set and designing data visualizations. They emphasize challenges of doing this work: from gaps and omissions in the archives of the Pan-Africanism social movement to the importance of situated data to the realization that the original premises of the project were flawed and required pivoting to ask new questions of the data. From the trials and tribulations—or data fails—they encountered, the authors assess the value of the project for promoting data literacy and equity in the cultural record in the context of high school curricula. As such, they propose that projects in African diaspora digital humanities that focus on data offer teachers the possibility of engaging reluctant students in data literacy while simultaneously encouraging students to develop an ethical lens for interpreting data beyond the classroom.