Data literacy in higher education of agricultural sector: mapping competences in the course content

Abstract

Ubiquitous datafication surrounds agriculture stakeholders with data as the raw material for additional value creation, resilience and innovation. Technical and soft competencies of data literacy (DL) are not comprehensively addressed in formal secondary education as an interdisciplinary and general concept. Aiming to assess DL structure set for the agricultural sector and the presence of open data (OD) in formal secondary education, we offer the methodological approach for landscaping 27 DL competencies over six areas of DL adapting the ODI Data Skills Framework for qualitative thematic analysis and quantifying DL structure. Three sources of data: undergraduate (BS) and graduate (MS) course descriptions (561), interviews (32) and course materials (8) offered to students of the University of Zagreb were used to contextualize the approach. At the MS level 47% of courses show DL with prevalent technical DL competencies. Limited DL was found at the BS level (17%) where soft and technical DL competence areas were balanced. Preliminary education guidelines regarding DL in the agricultural sector are given. Further development and use of our methodological approach can ensure core DL competencies and balance soft and entrepreneurship DL in formal secondary education for agricultural sector, but can also be extended to other domains.

Keywords

• Data literacy
• data competencies
• open data
• agriculture
• education guidelines
• Agriculture & Environmental Sciences