Teaching Students About Research: Open Data = Quality Data with Easy Access
By Carolyn Hoessler
When we teach students research skills and ways of approaching being a researcher, we know that research is more than just plugging in numbers or following a script.
In a statistical analysis, being able to select the variables to use (and not use) and the analysis to answer the question is as important as running the analysis.
We want students to design their own questions and analysis. The challenge though is where to get appropriate data easily and ethically?
At the U of S, we are in luck! Our librarians have identified several key Open Data sources:
Canadian Open Government Data
http://libguides.usask.ca/c.php?g=16466&p=91079
Site has 120,000 data sets that are freely available for anyone to use. They are from ten departments: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Citizenship and Immigration Canada; Environment Canada; Department of Finance Canada; Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Library and Archives Canada; Natural Resources Canada; Statistics Canada; Transport Canada and the Treasury Board Secretariat.
- Canada Open Data Pilot Project – “This pilot portal will make more than 260,000 datasets from the following ten participating departments available to all Canadians: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Citizenship and Immigration Canada; Environment Canada; Department of Finance Canada; Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Library and Archives Canada; Natural Resources Canada; Statistics Canada; Transport Canada and the Treasury Board Secretariat. ” (U of S library guide description)
- 2011 Census of Canada Web Module
– Released February 8, 2012
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm
includes the Census of Population and the Census of Agriculture. - CANSIM – “Cansim is Statistics Canada’s key socioeconomic database of survey data. Updated daily. FREE as of February 1, 2012. License Information: This is an Open Access resource freely available on the Internet. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and International Copyright law. ” (U of S library guide description)
United States Open Government Data
http://libguides.usask.ca/c.php?g=16472&p=91152
- Data.gov
- White House Open Government Initiative
- NASA Open Data
These datasets are either exportable or have web portal access to aggregated data. Contact your Librarian to learn more and for Government data, contact Rob Alary at Data Library Services: robert.alary@usask.ca
Have a question about teaching research design, or an exciting way to use Open Data in your course? Connect with me at the GMCTE or carolyn.hoessler@usask.ca
(Thank you to Darlene Fichter, U of S Library, for providing feedback and up-to-date information)
