Teaching with Disappearing Data: Invitation to Participate in Study
Today, we have another guest post from a Data Rescue Project volunteer. Jeanine is conducting a survey of instructors who teach with government data.
In addition, we will have our regular office hours this week on Wednesday, August 20, from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern. Please join us!
Register in advance. 🛟
Guest post by Jeanine Finn
I have been a data and digital scholarship librarian at The Claremont Colleges Library for seven years, assisting with a variety of data management and data discovery support.
In January 2025, I had the opportunity to teach a course in the Environmental Analysis program at Pomona College as a visiting lecturer. I taught an introductory course in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with a special focus on applying mapping approaches to questions of environmental and social justice.
With my background in libraries and as a researcher of information credibility, I knew I wanted to share with students the “legwork” involved in finding datasets for their research, and incorporate discussions and critiques of data creation, curation, and publication.
I had planned early in the semester to have a lab session using some of the raster analytics tools in the ArcGIS platform, with data from NASA’s Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET). The previous fall, I had attended a workshop on how to use that data to better understand climate change concerns (such as the problem of invasive species), and I knew that would be a topic of interest to my students.
In finalizing the lab prep in late January, I discovered the datasets were no longer on the server, and there was a sort of vague announcement about site maintenance.
To meet the immediate need, I used a prepared lesson from ArcGIS Online that worked with older data that had already been prepared for the analytics lesson. My students and I also spent a good portion of the lab period talking about dataset availability, and what it means (and what our options are) when free government data goes missing.
Since then, I have been curious to hear from other instructors who may have experienced something similar.
In order to gather some real-world data (and share it!) I am conducting a survey on “Teaching with Disappearing Data. I am interested in hearing from higher-ed instructors from all disciplines about their experiences with teaching with government datasets, and how they have adapted when and if that data disappears.
This survey is completely anonymous and should take about 8-10 minutes to complete.
The IRB at Claremont Graduate University approved this study on 6/17/25 under number 5113.
For additional information or questions you can contact me at:
Jeanine Finn
jeanine.finn@claremont.edu
Survey link: https://pomona.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bjSXkhCl0NtwxZc
